Sleeping Beauty (24 page)

“But I need to call the police! If I don’t explain to them that Brendan’s my boyfriend, they’re going to arrest him!”

He smashes his balled-up fist into the steering wheel. “They’re already going to arrest him, you tool! What–you think cops toss your house and
then
decide what to charge you with? Wake up, Claire.”

My eyes fill with tears. In the years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen Davin angry before. He’s never, ever raised his voice to me or cursed at me. It’s this–his fury at my naiveté–that brings me around to stare the situation in the face. I slump into the seat, feeling like a wet washcloth going through a ringer, every last drop being squeezed out.

He digs around between the seats, coming up with a napkin. I take it, blow my nose, and settle back in my seat, determined to stay silent so that nothing else I say can be used against me.

Thirty minutes later, Davin pulls into the empty parking lot of the marina and kills the engine. I trudge behind him down the dock to his slip. Not a word is exchanged between us as we board and cast off the lines. Once we’ve reached the open water, I climb down the ladder into the cabin and collapse on the bed. I stare into the darkness, waiting for the hum of the engine to lull me to sleep.

The sudden silence wakes me with a start. The angle of the boat shifts as it settles down into the water. I’m not sure how much time has gone by. I hear the anchor drop, and Davin walking back and forth across the deck. The ladder creaks under his weight as he lowers himself into the cabin, his feet meeting the floor with a
thump!

“Are we there?” I say, my voice thick with sleep.

“We’re there.” He flops down next to me, face-first into a pillow. “You warm enough?” he says, the words muffled by the pillow.

“Wait, aren’t we going somewhere?”

He turns onto his side. “Yeah, we’re going to sleep.”

I don’t answer, too scared that I might set him off again. Instead, I roll away from him onto my side.

He edges closer to me, slipping his arm around my waist and kissing me on the back of the head. “Sorry for yelling at you, Claire-Bo.”

I roll onto my back. “What did I do? What do I do?” The two questions back-to-back in two different verb tenses make no sense at all, but Davin knows what I mean.

He sighs. “I just don’t want anyone taking advantage of you. I had to worry enough about it back when you were nobody.”

“Thanks, Davin.”

“You know what I mean, gidget. You were so busy filming that you got totally cut off. You never noticed.”

“Noticed what?”

“Your old life? That’s over. But you didn’t get the memo. You’re still trying to be the same you, right, trying to live the same way.”

I reach for him, putting my head on his chest, my arm thrown over his stomach. His shirt still smells like he was trapped inside a smoker. I feel another bout of crying ready to roll me. He pulls me closer until my head is just under his chin. He starts stroking my hair, something he’s never done before. It feels nice.

“You gotta remember that you’re in a–a, like, glass house,” he stammers, “and that everyone is, you know, watching you all the time now.”

Even though he can’t see me, I roll my eyes. “A fish bowl.”

“What?”

“I’m living in a fish bowl, not a glass house, dumbass. The glass house is the one with the stones you shouldn’t throw. Do me a favor, okay? Just leave regular English alone. It’s painful to listen to.”

“Fine. Then stop being a gaper, get out in the shorebreak, and learn how to snap-up. Trust me, those cops are just Noahs, and the DA is the landlord. It’s hiddie, but you gotta kick-out before you get shoulder hopped or hell-munched.”

“Okay.”

“Do you even know what I just said?”

“You’re giving me a surfing lesson in the morning?”

He snickers and throws his free arm over his eyes. “In a manner of speaking. Right now, you need to just let it ride.”

“Shouldn’t I call someone?”

“They’ll call you. What do I always tell you?”

I sigh, reciting like a four-year-old. “‘Don’t waste your energy picking up the pieces. Sit back and wait for the puzzle.’”

“Exactly.” He pauses. “And don’t even
think
about calling Doc,” he says, his voice hard. “He’s a big boy, and you can’t help him anyway.” He pulls at the fabric of his shirt where my head is resting. “And stop boo-hooing. You’re getting my shirt wet.”

“I’m crying thinking about your Halloween costume, jerk,” I say, swiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “Was everyone at your gay party dressed like one of the Village People?”

He lays his open hand just below my bra, and lets it rest there. The warm weight of it is comforting, and I close my eyes. I’m beginning to drift off when he moves it down, just a little at a time, stopping when he reaches my bellybutton.

I lift my head. “Davin?”

“Hmm?”

“If this is your idea of heterosexual exploration, your timing is poor.”

I expect him to laugh, but he doesn’t.

“I’ve never touched a pregnant girl,” he says, so quietly that it’s almost a whisper.

“A
pregnant
girl? You mean you’ve never touched a girl.”

“I’ve touched a girl.”

I turn my head. “You have?”

“Yeah.”

“Care to elaborate on that?” I say doubtfully.

He seems hurt by my tone. “More than one girl, even.”

“At the same time?” I joke. “Wow, I’m impressed. Most straight guys can’t even make that claim.”

He pats my stomach. “Do you mind?”

I drop my head back onto his chest. “No, I don’t mind.”

“Does it–can you, you know,
feel it
?”

“Not yet. I don’t even know how pregnant I am.”

A long silence follows, so I figure he’s fallen asleep. When he does speak again, it jolts me just as I’m about to doze off myself.

“You should probably find out, Claire-Bo,” he says. “Good information to have, you know?”

“Thanks for the prenatal tip, dude. You have any insight on natural childbirth versus drugs?”

“Better living through chemistry,” he says immediately. “Definitely go with the drugs.”

I’m too tired to laugh or even smile. I close my eyes against the dark, pretending that it
is
Brendan holding me, that everything is as it should be, that there is no such thing as “felony sexual battery,” that this nightmare isn’t real.

I pretend that the morning sun won’t drag anything ugly out into the light.

Chapter Eighteen

November 1
^st

Davin lands the boat at his boss’s private dock in Manhattan Beach on the Strand. Wearing jeans but sans shirts and shoes, the boss in question is there to greet us. Evan Tallant is in his mid-sixties, and has the deep wrinkles and brown skin of a lifelong surfer, but he’s still pretty spry. He catches the line Davin throws him, and runs it around the crossbar of the dock cleat, pulling it tight before wrapping it and topping it with a figure-eight.

He offers me his hand as I jump the few feet from the boat to the dock. “Thanks, Evan. How are you? Haven’t seen you for awhile.”

“Hangin’ five.”

“Not ten?”

He shrugs and smiles. “Age catches up with all of us eventually.”

“Rev here?” asks Davin.

Evan drops a set of car keys into his open hand, and leads us up the wooden stairs towards a stark, contemporary house that looks like a white layer cake on the verge of collapsing into the ocean. “Tag dropped it instead. Rev said he’d meet you there. It’s all in the kitchen.”

“What is?” I say.

“Relax, Claire-Bo. Let it ride, remember?”

Once we’re inside, Davin scoops a paper grocery bag off Evan’s white marble kitchen counter, and keeps right on walking. With a look behind me at Evan to make sure it’s okay (it
is
his house after all), I tag along behind him. We climb two flights of white carpeted stairs overlooking a great room containing all-white, spotless furniture.

I’m tempted to ask if his boss has obsessive-compulsive disorder, but I let it ride.

He stops at the doorway of a bedroom. “Here,” he says, shoving the bag at me. “Get showered and dressed. You’ve got forty-five minutes.”

I reach into the bag and pull out a silky, navy blue dress. I spy a pair of matching navy pumps at the bottom. “The shoes won’t fit.”

“They’ll fit.” He crosses the room and lowers the blinds.

I lift one of the shoes out. It’s
really
tiny. “How did you–”

“Charley Coney called Ivanna. She knew all your measurements. Charley told her what we needed, and she put it together.”

I stare at him, confused. “Ivanna came here?”

He shakes his head. “Ivanna took the clothes to Alex. Alex threw in the shampoo and makeup and stuff. Surfer buddy of mine picked it up from Alex at the studio. He’s a courier, so no one suspected a thing. Another friend–Tag, you’ve met him, it’s just been a few years–brought it here. Don’t worry…everyone’s on need-to-know.” He opens the door to the bathroom. “Shower’s there. Got everything you need?”

“Where are we–”

“Cork it, Claire. Be ready in forty-five,” he says, swinging the door closed behind him.

“Davin?”

He stops, popping his head back in. “What?”

“Have you talked to Brendan?” Davin’s confiscated my phone and has refused to turn on the radio, leaving me in an information blackout, supposedly for my own good. I shift from one foot to the other, bracing for another verbal blast. “I mean, has he tried to call? Do you know where he is?”

“‘No’ to the first question, ‘every five seconds’ to the second, and ‘I don’t know to the third.’ He pauses. “He’s not in jail. Bail was set at twenty-five thousand dollars. Andy Gordon paid it in cash last night.” He shuts the door.

*****

Davin drives Evan’s black Porsche north up the 405, and exits west like he’s going to the airport. Before I can ask, he turns south, takes a few right and left turns, and pulls into an alleyway behind a row of trendy restaurants and high-end boutiques. I follow Davin’s lead and get out. A windowless metal fire door opens, and a guy wearing an apron and the perpetual tan of a surfer-dude appears.

Davin’s right: I do recognize him, although he’s taller and beefier than the high school kid who tagged along hopefully at the fringes of Davin’s group until he showed a little talent, at which point they adopted him, christening him with the apt nickname of “Tag.”

He veers my way.
Uh-oh
, I think, flexing my fingers, getting my hand ready. Male surfers have a ritualized greeting that consists of saying incomprehensible shit to you like “Howzit brah?” On the heels of this is a complicated handshake of sorts, which involves slaps, finger snaps, fist pounds, and embraces in infinite and unpredictable combinations. I try to keep up with whatever they’re throwing out, but even after more than a decade of enduring this, I’ve never been able to do much more than fumble my way through it. I always walk away feeling like a total tool.

“’Sup dally?” he says to me, opting for a sideways slap of my open hand and a fist bump. “Tag.”

“Uh, hi.” For good measure, I throw a second “hi” onto the first. “How you doing, Tag?”

“No complaints,” he says smoothly, grinning at Davin as he makes his way to the other side of the car. Davin receives a more complex blend of slapping and snapping that ends in the two bumping shoulders, but it’s so smooth you’d think they’d been practicing it all day.

“’Sup Tag?” says Davin.

“All-a-go, china,” he answers, pointing to the van behind the Porsche.

“Dookie coming?” says Davin.

“Hack shack this morning,” he says, shaking his head sadly. “Pulled a kali.” He hands Davin a lanyard with a laminated picture ID hanging from the bottom. “You’re ace.”

“Shommy,” Davin mutters. He tilts his head, looking skeptical. “He better not be board-dorkin’ me, brah.”

Tag suddenly looks a lot less friendly. “He’s tribe.”

“Ma bad, dude. Frothin’ some. Rev?”

“Sha, as planned. He’s amped. Shocka bra.”

“Mahalo,” says Davin, initiating another round of fist bumps and hand clasps.

“’Slater.”

I hang back, working out their absurd conversation in my mind like a U.N. translator.

How are you, Tag?

Everything is ready, my friend.

Will Dookie be accompanying us?

Alas, he is receiving medical treatment after doing something ill-advised. You will be alone.

That is indeed bad news. It would be unfortunate if he were trying to trick me.

That is impossible, as the aforementioned Dookie is a life-long friend/blood relation.

My apologies, my friend. I am currently in a high state of anxiety. Where is Rev?

He is where you asked him to be. He is eager to help. Relax, my friend.

Thank you.

I will see you another time.

“What was that all about?” I say, once I’m in the van. “And why does it smell like onions in here?”

“Catering van,” says Davin.

In the back, boxes slide and thumping against the inside of the van as he turns out of the alley, heading back the way we came. A blue sign directs us ahead with the words “Los Angeles County Courthouse—Airport Division.” A shiny, modern building of glass, with what looks like a steel wagon wheel nesting on top, rises above a spider web of spotless sidewalks, and a standard row of newly-planted, cut-and-paste, office park trees.

The place is infested with TV vans, the parking lot and sidewalks crawling with reporters. A line of anxious-looking deputies are separated from a restless horde of hundreds by an unimpressive cordon of yellow tape.

I shrink away from the window. “Oh, my god, we’re not going there, are we?”

“Nope.”

The courthouse grows smaller in my side mirror when I see a beat up, much less official-looking sign skulking low in the grass: “All courthouse deliveries MUST be made at rear entrance. Please be prepared to show ID.”