The Face of Death (3 page)

4

“
DON’T YOU BOTH LOOK LAZY AND PLEASED ABOUT IT,” CALLIE
says.

She stands in the kitchen, posed. Burgandy-painted fingernails tap the black granite countertop of the kitchen island. Her copper hair contrasts with the white-oak cabinets behind her. She arches a single perfect, disapproving eyebrow.

Bonnie and I grin at each other.

If there was a patron saint of irreverence, it would be Callie. She is crass, sharp tongued, and has a habit of calling everyone “honey-love.” Rumor says that she has a written reprimand on file for calling the Director of the FBI “honey-love.” I don’t doubt it; it is Callie to the core.

She is also beautiful in a way that the twentysomethings envy, because it is a permanent beauty, a movie-star beauty, undeterred by age. I have seen pictures of Callie at twenty, and I can honestly say that she is more beautiful now at thirty-eight. She has flaming red hair, full lips, long legs—she could have been a model. But instead of packing a hairbrush, she packs a gun. I think one of the things that makes her even more beautiful—if that’s possible—is her absolute disinterest in her own physical perfection. It’s not that she has a poor self-image (far, far from it), it’s that her beauty isn’t a meaningful trait to her.

Callie is hard as nails, smarter than the scientists at NASA, and the most loyal friend a person could ever hope to have. None of this is self-evident. Callie is not a touchy-feely girl. I’ve never gotten a greeting card or a birthday present from her. Her love shines through her actions.

It was Callie who found me in the aftermath of Joseph Sands. Callie who took my gun away from me, even as I pointed it at her, and pulled the trigger, firing on empty, click-click-click.

Callie is a member of my team; we have worked together for ten years. She has a master’s degree in forensics to go along with a mind made for what we do. Callie has a certain brutality to her when it comes to investigative work. Evidence and truth are her higher power. If the evidence points to you, she’ll turn on you and devour you, regardless of how well you got along before that point. She won’t feel guilty about it either. The simplest solution: Don’t be a criminal and you’ll get along with her just fine.

Callie isn’t perfect, she just wears her bruises better than the rest of us. She’d gotten pregnant at fifteen and had been forced by her parents to give up the child for adoption. Callie had kept this a secret from everyone, including me, until six months ago. A killer had forced it into the open. People could envy her beauty, but she’d fought and suffered to become the person she is.

“We
are
pleased,” I say, smiling. “Thanks for coming.”

She waves her hand in a gesture of dismissal. “I’m here for the free food.” She gives me a stern look. “There
will
be free food, won’t there?”

Bonnie answers for me. She goes over to the refrigerator, opens the door, and comes back holding a Callie favorite: a box of chocolate donuts.

Callie mimes wiping away a tear. “Bless you.” She smiles down at Bonnie. “Want to help me polish off a few?”

Bonnie smiles back, more sun and roses. They get milk, an important ingredient. I watch them down some donuts and I reflect on the fact that this, this simple minute, brings to me a burst of happiness that is almost a perfect thing. Friends and donuts and smiling daughters, the elixir of laughter and life.

“No, honey-love,” I hear Callie say. “
Never
eat without dunking first. Unless no milk is available, of course, because that’s the first rule of life, and never forget it:
The donut always trumps the milk.
”

I stare at my friend in wonder. She’s unaware of it, engrossed in doling out her donut-lore. This is one of the things that makes Callie one of my favorite people. Her willingness to have fun. To grab, guiltless, at the low-hanging fruit of happiness.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I say.

I pad up carpet-covered stairs to my bedroom and look around. It’s a good-sized master. Plantation shutters on the front wall can be configured to let the sunshine in by increments, or in force. The walls are painted in off-whites, the bed coverings are a bright splash of light-blue color. The bed dominates the room, four-poster, king-sized, top-of-the-line, heaven-sent mattress. Heaps of pillows, mountains of pillows. I love pillows.

There are two matching chests of drawers, one for Matt and one for me, all in dark-colored cherrywood. A ceiling fan churns away, quiet, its low-slung hum my longtime sleep companion.

I sit down on the bed and look around, taking it in as a whole.

I need a moment, before it all starts. A moment to see it for what it was, not what it’s going to become.

Great things and terrible things and things banal, all happened here, on this bed. They run through me like raindrops through tree leaves. A quiet thundering on the roof of my world.

Memories eventually lose their sharp edges and stop drawing blood. They quit cutting you and start
stirring
you. That’s what my memories of my family have become, and I’m pretty happy about that. There was a time when a thought of Matt or Alexa would double me over in pain. Now I can remember and smile.

Progress, babe, progress.

Matt still talks to me from time to time. He was my best friend; I’m not ready to stop hearing his voice in my head.

I close my eyes and remember moving this bed into this room, after Matt and I bought it at some mom-and-pop furniture store. This was our first home, purchased by cleaning out our bank accounts for a down payment and praying for an understanding lender. We bought a home in an up-and-coming area of Pasadena, a newer two-story (no way could we afford one of the hundred-year-old Craftsman homes, though we eyed them wistfully). It wasn’t so close to work, but neither of us wanted to live in LA proper. We wanted a family. Pasadena was safer. The house looked like every other one around it, yes, it lacked identity, true—but it was ours.

“This is a home,” Matt had said to me in the front yard, hugging me from behind as we both looked up at the house. “We’re going to make a life here. I think a new bed fits that. It’s symbolic.”

It was silly and sappy, of course. And I agreed, of course. So we bought the bed, and struggled it up the stairs ourselves. We broke a happy sweat assembling the headboard and frame and baseboard, grunted getting the box spring and mattress on. We sat on the floor of the bedroom, panting.

Matt had looked over at me and smiled. He’d bobbed his eyebrows up and down. “Whatcha say we slap some sheets on the bed and engage in some horizontal mambo?”

I had giggled at his crudity. “You sure know how to charm a girl.”

His face had grown mock-serious. He’d placed a hand on his heart, while raising the other. “My father taught me the rules of bedding a wench. I promise, as always, to live by them.”

“What are they again?”

“Never wear your socks during sex. Know the location of the clitoris. Cuddle her to sleep before falling asleep yourself. No farting in bed.”

I nod, solemn. “Your father was a wise man. I agree to your terms.”

We mamboed all afternoon, and into the dusk.

I look down at the bed. Feeling it more than seeing it.

Alexa was conceived on this bed, in some sweaty, tender moment, or maybe during something rougher and more acrobatic, who knows. Matt and I came together two and parted three. A successive joy, divine addition.

I spent sleepless nights on this bed while I was pregnant. Ankles swollen, back aching. I blamed Matt for everything. Blamed him with a bitterness you can only achieve at three in the morning and 210 days. I loved Matt for everything too. A depthless love that was a mixture of real joy and hormones gone berserk.

Most people start out, really, too selfish for marriage. A pregnancy will beat that right out of you.

The day after we brought her home, Matt and I set Alexa down in the middle of this bed. We lay on either side of her, and wondered at the fact of her.

Alexa was made here. She cried here sometimes. She laughed here, she was angry here, I think she even vomited here once after Matt let her eat too much ice cream. I cleaned up the bed, Matt slept on the couch.

I have learned lessons in this bed. Once, Matt and I were making love. Not having sex—
making love
. It had been preceded by wine and candles. We had the perfect CD playing at the perfect volume—loud enough to create an atmosphere, low enough not to distract. The moon was lush and the night breeze was temperate. We had just enough sweat going to keep us slippery in a sexy, non-sticky way. It was sensuous defined.

And then, I farted.

It was a ladylike toot, sure—but a fart nonetheless. We both froze. Everything seemed to hang in a long, agonizing, embarrassed moment.

And then, the giggling started. Followed by laughter. Followed by howls that we smothered with pillows, until we remembered Alexa was staying at a friend’s. Followed later by a different kind of sex. It was no longer storybook, but it was more tender and more true.

You can have pride, and you can have love, but you can’t always have both. In this bed I learned that love was better.

It wasn’t all farts and laughter. Matt and I fought in this bed too. God, did we have some good fights. That’s how we referred to them—“good fights.” We were convinced that a successful marriage required a healthy knockdown, drag-out every now and then. We took great pride in some of our “better efforts”—retrospective pride, of course.

I was raped in this bed, and I watched Matt die while I was tied to this bed. Bad stuff.

I breathe in, breathe out. The raindrops fall through the tree leaves, soft but inexorable. The basic truth: You get wet when it rains, no way around it.

I consider the bed and think about the future. About all the good things that could still happen here, should I decide to stay. I didn’t have Matt, and I didn’t have Alexa, but I did have Bonnie, and I did have me.

Life as it used to be, that was the milk. But
life
in
general,
was pure chocolate donut, and the donut trumps the milk.

“So this is where all the magic happens.”

Callie’s voice startles me from my reverie. She’s standing in the doorway, her gaze speculative.

“Hey,” I say. “Thanks for coming. For helping me do this.”

She walks into the room, her eyes roving. “Well, it was this or reruns of
Charlie’s Angels
. Besides, Bonnie feeds me.”

I grin. “How to catch a wild Callie: chocolate donuts and a really big mousetrap.”

She comes over, plops down on the bed. Bounces up and down on it a few times. “Very nice,” she judges.

“I have a lot of good memories here.”

“I’ve always wondered…” She hesitates.

“What?”

“Why did you keep it? This is the same bed, isn’t it? Where it happened?”

“The one and only.” I run a hand over the comforter. “I thought about getting rid of it. I couldn’t sleep in it for the first few weeks after I came home. I slept on the couch. When I got up the courage to try, I couldn’t bear sleeping anywhere else. One terrible thing happened here. That shouldn’t outweigh all of the good times. I loved people here. My people. I’m not letting Sands take that away from me.”

I can’t decipher the look in her eyes. Sadness. Guilt. A little bit of longing?

“See now? That’s the difference between us, Smoky. I have a single bad moment in my teens, sleep with the wrong boy, get pregnant, and give up my child. I make damn sure forever-after that I never have another committed relationship. You get raped in this bed, but its strongest memories for you are the moments you shared with Matt and Alexa. I admire your optimism, I really do.” Her smile is just short of melancholy. Her lips curve in self-mockery. “As for me? My cup runneth under.”

I don’t reply, because I know my friend. She’s sharing this with me, but that’s all she’s capable of. Words of comfort would be embarrassing, almost a betrayal. I’m here so she can say these things and know someone heard her, nothing more.

She smiles. “Know what I miss?” she asks. “Matt’s tacos.”

I look at her in surprise. Then I smile too.

“They were great, weren’t they?”

“I dream about them sometimes,” she replies, melodramatic longing in her eyes.

I couldn’t cook with a gun to my head. I could burn water, as the saying goes. Matt, as always, as in all things, was the whole package. He bought cookbooks and tried things and nine times out of ten the results were amazing.

He’d learned how to make tacos by hand from someone, I don’t know who. Not the kind with the icky store-bought shells, but the kind where you begin with a supple tortilla and transform it on the spot into a stiff yet chewy half-moon of deliciousness. He added some kind of spice to the meat that literally made my mouth water.

Callie too, it seems. She loved food, and invited herself to dinner three or four times a month. I can see her in my mind, scarfing down tacos, chewing her food while talking out of the side of her mouth. Saying something that made Alexa giggle till her milk went the wrong way and spewed out of her nose. Which was, of course, the height of hilarity, the apex of thigh-slappers for Alexa.