You and I, Me and You (22 page)

I yawned and wished I was with George (something I almost never wished) to grab my own cup of coffee. It had been a busy day
before
we encountered Zimmerman, and by now news that Sussudio had been arrested (or, as the reporters had to put it, “the main suspect in the mysterious deaths of blah-blah-blah”) was out. So finding I had calls from Cathie, Patrick (two from Patrick), and Max Gallo wasn't a surprise. The actual voice mails were, but for different reasons.

Cathie: “What's up with you and my brother? Something weird's going on. Yes, even for you. You say that all the time, y'know. Call me.”

Patrick: “Oh my God, please be okay. I saw on the news—okay, are you okay? Call me, okay? Look, I think this is a sign that you should definitely take some time off and just focus on yourself. And you'd get to spend more time with Pearl! Let's talk about it when you get home. Please don't be dead!”

Max: “Wow, you got him! Jesus, is there anything you can't do? It'd be annoying if you weren't so cute. Listen, if it's not classified, would you please call me and tell me about it? I'm sure you kicked ass all over the place, but I'd love the actual deets and I've got some questions about his pathology. I bet one or both of his parents gave themselves The Big Sleep. God, so many questions. Maybe I can take you out for a cup of coffee? Not a date. Just to talk. I can't believe you got him already! Congrats and I knew you'd get that fuck-o.”

Patrick: “Oh, I almost forgot, Pearl didn't stealth poop today. I think. It's a big house. Okay, 'bye.”

My phone chirped and I saw it was Cathie trying me again. Ah! A tinge of normalcy in the oddest weekend ever. I was as delighted as my fatigue would allow, and delighted to talk about anything besides serial murder, BOFFO's nonexistence, or Max Gallo's mesmerizing eyes.

“What's going on with you and my brother?”

Anything besides that. Oh, hell, I'd just heard her voice mail; I should have been expecting it. But the habit of my friend was strong: she spoke the truth, always and unequivocally, without thinking twice, because if you think about what it's okay to talk about, you're not best friends anymore. We'd met at the mental hospital—Cathie had been an enthusiastic cutter—and knew each other before we had training bras. The truth rule had worked for a long time.

“I don't know, Cath, and it's driving me nuts. This is nothing against Patrick at all. He's wonderful.”

“And I got the
weirdest
voice mail from George. ‘If you haven't noticed, your idiot pal is switching and decompensating all over the place and it's driving me up a goddamned tree, so be warned and also, what are you wearing right now? Don't forget you want to paint my car, and I'm willing to be there, too. Do you have butt-crack black in your palette?' Like that.”

I shuddered and apologized, for the thousandth time, for my partner.

“Never mind him, but I'm still painting the car. I'm not going near his butt crack, though. Are you really switching back and forth that fast? It's you and Shiro and you and Shiro, right? And Adrienne hardly comes out at all?”

Of course she would have noticed. I should have realized she would. “Yeah. It's weird but not scary. It's not even so much that we're switching; it's more like the barriers between us are getting softer. Like they were brick and now they're smoke. Something. Shit, I don't know. A lot's happened in not much time.”

There was a long pause, and when Cathie spoke it was with an odd tentativeness I hadn't heard often from her. She used that tone when she was realizing truth and speaking truth at the same time, no matter whom the truth could hurt.

“I've noticed lots of good changes in you. And I'd love to attribute them to my brother. But I think it's more accurate to attribute them to you. I don't think it's as corny as falling in love. Maybe it's deciding to please yourself first. Maybe … that's what you should be doing more of. You put everything and everyone before yourself, Cadence, and you always have. It's why you're easy to love. But I think it's also held you back for a long time. I think the changes are good. I think you need to keep doing what you're doing. Regardless of the, uh, collateral damage.”

I blew out the breath I'd been holding, my knees gone so abruptly weak with relief I would have fallen if I weren't in a chair. I could barely face the thought of breaking up with Patrick; knowing I would hurt my best friend had been an added torture. It wouldn't have stopped me or changed my course, but it had been dreadful to think about. But Cathie thought I should. She was on my side. And I was foolish to think there was anywhere else she would be.

“That's … thanks, Cathie. I know what it cost, saying that. I'm not sure why you did, but I'm grateful.”

I could hear her sad smile. “You know the rule. Unequivocal truth. Because if you stop to think about what it's okay to talk about, you're not best friends anymore.”

“I'll … okay. I'll call you later, all right?”

“Yeah. You've got pesky murder paperwork to do, huh?”

I had no idea. What paperwork
did
fake FBI agents have to fill out after they made a citizen's arrest on a real killer and shot up his house but didn't hurt anyone? “Sure.”

“I saw on the news that you got him. The Little Canada cops are getting the credit, though. Little hosers!”

“The important thing is, evil was stymied and his poster collection was ruined.”

“What?”

“'Bye.”

 

chapter fifty-five

Not a creature
was stirring, not even a fake FBI agent. But old habits die et cetera, so I made sure the conference room door was closed. Then I sat, brought up the file on my phone, clicked Play, and hunched forward. The saying is “I'm all ears!,” when it's something you want to hear. I was no ears.

Then I saw myself on the screen, my hair scraped back into a high ponytail. No makeup except some cherry ChapStick … Shiro loved the flavor of artificial cherries, which was one of the many things about her I would never understand. They weren't cherries, for one thing, more like the cherries that popped up when you played the slots. Metallic cherries with no juice. Who tolerates it, much less smears it on their mouth, where, pardon the obvious, the wearer can't help but taste it?

(
Get on with it. Quit stalling.)

All right, good advice, but I stand by everything I just said.

My eyes in Shiro's face were calm and patient, our mouth a line. Our gaze was steady; our breathing was steady. Shiro could bluff the finest poker player on the planet. She'd done it to me plenty of times, and I lived inside her head. You can't get any closer than living inside someone's head. So what does it say about her (and me) that I had no idea what she was going to say now, in the six minutes she had stolen in the middle of a
very
busy day? What had been so important?

“We must break up with Patrick immediately. We must move out of his house immediately. Note I did not say ‘our.' It was never ‘our.' He found it; he bought it; he would not hear of us contributing, which was gentlemanly in a chauvinistic way.

“I know this is difficult for you. But it will be so much worse for him; you must understand that. I think you do understand that. Because I know you, and though you are a hider, you are not a liar—even to yourself. No more than I, at any rate. Do you truly think Patrick will not eventually notice you are going through the motions?

“Quite unconsciously, and understandably, you have made a suit of shining armor, you have created a picture of the Perfect Man for You/Us and, whether it fits him or not, you've stuffed poor Patrick into that armor. At best it's unfair. At worst, it could result in considerable damage, the kind of damage that will keep you (and others) awake at 2:00
A.M.
in Patrick's bed while he sleeps beside us in piss-ignorance. Not to overstate my case, but this will be the thing you regret on your deathbed. That, and not investing in Twitter.”

“I was still a teenager!”

Shiro took a breath, held it for a beat, then
whooshed
it out. “My old friend. This is harder. I must tell you my motivation for this conversation—”

I was pretty sure conversations were two-sided.

“—shush, I knew you were going to say that. But I am not only trying to act in Patrick's best interest; my motives are not as altruistic as that, and I cannot pretend otherwise. I am acting in my interests as well. I am in love with Dr. Gallo.”

Well, poop on a cracker. I was, too. Also: “Dr.” Gallo? Was it possible she didn't know his first name? Formal was one thing, but …

“I don't want to live with another man and perhaps raise a family with him when I love someone else. I know you are a hider, Cadence, and I know it is my fault.”

What?

“I let you hide because I am selfish and I want to live. My existence is one hundred percent contingent on letting you hide. You made me by necessity—in many ways you are my mother, not my sister. And I was grateful to live. But now I see I am … I guess I would say I have become your personal escape hatch. That is not my function; it is not my design. I cannot let you hide from this.”

What are you saying?
I was starting to feel the familiar throat-clogging panic at the thought of being abandoned. By anyone: Patrick, BOFFO, Shiro …

“Don't fret, Cadence.” Her smile on my face was bitter, bitter. “This is not a suicide note.

“We love Cathie—ah, you do, I mean, and I do not dislike her. But for years, she was all the family you had. Small wonder you decided to fall for her brother. You're repeating childhood patterns, Cadence, and given our childhood, that is the polar opposite of healthy. You saw that moving in with Patrick, making a life with him, would open doors. What you could not face—what I would not face—was that that very same decision makes other doors swing shut. Doors we may never get to open again.”

“I know.” I could feel tears sting my eyes. “I know this, Shiro. I swear I do.”

She smiled from my face. It was odd. I had seen her before in pictures, on VHS tapes … as technology advanced, so did the methods our psychiatrists used to show us to each other. Always I had seen her as a petite Asian-American woman when everyone swore she was a tall blonde like me, that Adrienne wasn't a redhead but a tall blonde. I still saw her, but in my body. Her expressions, the way she held herself, the way she spoke … those were all Shiro.

If she saw a tape of me, whom would she see?

“I know you know this,” she told me. “You will have figured it out by now. I wanted to explain my motivations and to tell you I will help you with this any way I can. I know you love Dr. Gallo as I do. And I know you will be kind to Patrick. I will help you with that as well.” She paused, and seemed to shrink inside herself a little. When she spoke again I could hardly believe it: Shiro was afraid. “Since I am demanding you do this right now, I will—I will tell Patrick if you cannot. That sort of thing is not my strength, but we cannot keep hiding behind walls built in childhood. I cannot accuse you of using me as a trapdoor and then insist you do something I do not want to face. I will tell him. If you want me to.”

“I'll do it,” I told her. “I don't want to either, but it's my decision, too.”

She sat a little straighter and smiled at me. “Thank you, B.S.” Big Sister, her old, old nickname for me. I hadn't heard it in years. It was true, I was the oldest; I had made the other two. They were born of my terror and despair; that was true, too. “I love you. Always.”

“I love you, too,” I told her. And that was also true. That was the best truth.

Shiro made as if she was going to stop recording, then caught herself. “I do not know when you will see this, so just in case, Sussudio is Ian Zimmerman. Good night.”

Oh, goddamned Shiro Jones!

I had to laugh. The whole thing, it was just too weird. Maybe
that
was the best truth.

 

chapter fifty-six

Patrick was waiting
for me, and not in a good way.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” I kept my head down while I petted a delighted Pearl. I was half afraid he'd be asleep and I'd have to wake him up to break up with him. It was awful, but lying to myself and to him for even a few more hours seemed worse. But somehow knowing he'd been waiting up, unhappy, wasn't much better. “Sorry to be so late.”

“I know you were busy. Glad you're okay.”

“Yeah, I am. Listen, Patrick—”

“We should talk.”

“Yeah. I've—”

“This is too much.”

“I know. And the thing of it is—”

“I mean, I thought we could make this work. But I don't think we can. This—” He waved a hand, gesturing to the beautiful perfect house. “It's only been three days—”

“Two.”

“Check your watch.”

I did. “Oh.”

“Yeah. So like I said, it's only been three days, and you're never here, or if you're here you're thinking about BOFFO, and if by the grace of the gods BOFFO loses funding you're thinking about how you can find them funding so you can keep working a dangerous job, and meanwhile I'm stuck here with the dog—”

“It's only been three days!”

“Yeah, that's a long time to be stuck with the dog. I mean, I think Olive's great—”

“Pearl.”

“Yeah, that's another thing.”

I threw up my hands. “You knew I was a multiple before we moved in!”

“Yeah, but I didn't know your dog was a multiple.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “What?” The oddest mood shift had come over me. I had dreaded walking through the door, cringed at the thought of hurting him. If someone had told me,
It's okay; he'll break up with you first
, I would have thought I'd be relieved.