Crowne of Lies

by Reiss, CD

  I swallowed hard. He’d never said anything to me. Bianca must have told him about my jeans and the mysterious ash. Why did he not come to me? “What did he say when you told him?”

  “When I told him what?”

  “About the ash on my jeans, Bianca. Stop fucking around.”

  She came down the steps, stopping in front of me with the banister between us. “I told him I’d been dusting up there and it fell. I told him the ashes came out and I cleaned them up before he could see. He was livid. He called me a liar. He said I was covering for the cleaning lady. Then when she denied it, he said I was trying to purge your mother. He couldn’t believe what a sneak I was. He said I’d done it out of spite. I didn’t tell him that his daughter was the spiteful one.”

  Bianca, the stepmonster, had covered for me? Lied for me? Risked her marriage to an unforgiving man to protect me? Who was she?

  Who was I?

  Was I the kind of person who let that happen? Was I someone who did bad things and covered them up, thinking as long as I didn’t get caught, no one was hurt?

  “I’m—”

  “Sorry, yes. I know, Ella.”

  “Daddy was wrong. He should have known you better.”

  “Well, he’s dead now. So it doesn’t matter.”

  Did nothing matter? Could a person do anything they wanted because we were all going to die one day anyway? Did all the scoreboards reset to zero? Was the plan to outlive everyone else’s grudges and resentments and drop dead with your own, alone but clean?

  “I have to go,” I said, taking out my phone to call a car, which I did before seeing Logan’s texts.

  —Are you all right?—

  —Where are you?—

  He’d texted a few minutes after I’d left, then again.

  —You’re not here—

  —I’m fine. Go to bed—

  —I need to know where you are—

  —I’m going home—

  “You’re perfectly welcome to stay,” Bianca said, coming up next to me.

  “No. I need to be… hell is other people, right?” I pocketed the phone, unable to look at her.

  “You look upset. Will Logan be there when you get home?”

  Yes, and that was a problem.

  “Of course I’m…” I took a deep breath. “I’ll be fine. Thank you for telling me. I know it looks like I’m running off mad, but I’m grateful for what you did and… I don’t know. I have to figure out what it means.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It has to mean something.” I rubbed my temples to erase the impending headache. “It can’t all be empty.”

  “It’s not all empty.” She rubbed my arm. “But you have to fill the right things.”

  My phone chimed. The car was pulling up the block. Bianca went outside and waited with me on the sidewalk.

  “Did Daddy forgive you?” I asked as the Prius stopped at the curb. “For the thing you didn’t do?”

  “Who can say?”

  No one could say whether or not he could hold a grudge against a woman he’d professed to love, letting it eat at him for years, or if he’d let it go. He didn’t talk about what was in his heart.

  “I get it.” I hugged her. “Still sorry.”

  “Get home safe, and come by some time. Bring your husband.” She winked.

  I waved and got into the car. The driver turned down his radio.

  “Good evening, miss,” he said. “Still going to Hancock Park?”

  “Actually, I need to go to Highland.”

  Cradling her poodle, my stepmother went into the house I grew up in and closed the door.

  28

  LOGAN

  —I’m going home—

  Not “coming” home. Coming home was with me, in the present—now. Coming home was “I’ll see you there.”

  Going home was something completely different. It was the home of past and future, where she wouldn’t see me.

  I parked in front of the warehouse on Highland, where the mural commanded me to BREAK SHIT without saying what shit was or how badly it needed to be broken. I drove around the corner. Her car was parked in back, and the lights were off there too. I got out and listened for any sound from inside. Nothing.

  I didn’t like being cut off, and I didn’t like having to figure out where she was. She was still my wife. If something happened to her, I needed to know where it was happening.

  She had to be coming here. I’d just have to wait.

  When I told myself I’d wait at Ella’s back door all night if I had to, I didn’t take myself literally because I didn’t think I had to.

  After the first half hour, I unfolded an old aluminum chair I found under the steps and waited on the landing. After the second half hour, I called Colton to see if Ella had gotten back yet. He said “nah” and asked if he should wait for her. I told him to go to bed or whatever he did.

  In the silence that followed a circling helicopter, I drank two-fisted from a well of worry.

  My right fist clutched the fear that something terrible had happened to her.

  In my left, I held onto the idea that she’d gone to a man’s bed for comfort. There, they counted down the days until she was free of me.

  What my right hand held was heavier, but my left got all the attention.

  We were playacting at love. We were nothing. Nonexistent. Happiness didn’t make a damn bit of difference. Fulfillment was for after the divorce.

  For now we had roles, and every day we walked on stage and said our lines. In the morning, she cradled her cup and blew on her coffee, smiling at the first taste, tapping her ring on a mug with Van Gogh’s Starry Night printed on the side when she was thinking about whatever we were talking about. My coming day. My hopes for it. My fears.

  Me me me me all the way home.

  Half our marriage was gone, and it hadn’t occurred to me to make her happy until it was too late. She was doing everything I wanted and being exactly who I thought I needed.

  She thought I didn’t give a shit, but I did. I gave a lot of shits, and I didn’t realize how much trouble that was until I was sitting in an aluminum folding chair behind a run-down warehouse, waiting for her.

  Close to midnight, a car pulled down the alley and Ella got out. She looked disheveled and drawn, head down so she didn’t see me until the car pulled away.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She came up the steps and stood right in front of me, keys jangling off a finger. “Why are you here?”

  I could have asked her the same question. She didn’t live here. She lived with me.

  Semantics.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “You’re blocking the door.”

  I got up, folded the chair, and leaned it against the railing. Ella unlocked the steel security door, then the interior, and went inside, turning the lights on as she went.

  “What did you want to talk about?” She dropped her bag and peeled off her jacket on her way across the length of the space, leaving it in a pile on the floor next to the huge white canvas. It had a red blob in the middle now.

  “You decided what to do with this?”

  “Not really.” She stopped to kick off her shoes.

  I hoped she’d tell me more so I could show an interest in her life. Take action to improve it or something… whatever she needed. All I had to do was listen.

  “Can you undo me?” Her hair had grown, and she had to pull it over one shoulder so I could get at the back zipper of the dress she’d worn to dinner a few hours and a million realizations ago.

  “You smell like throw up,” I said.

  Admittedly, of all the things I noticed, that was the wrong one to voice. She also smelled like wine and sounded hoarse, but those tangible, sensory changes were nothing compared to how far away she seemed.

  I drew the zipper down, letting my finger course down the length of her back, over her bra, to the curve above her ass. I pushed the dress off her shoulders and let it d
rop to the floor. She stepped out of it, only in her underwear.

  “Thanks.” She didn’t even look at me, walking away with her arms behind her to unhook her bra, bare feet on the concrete floor as she slid the straps down and tossed it onto the couch.

  She wasn’t being intentionally seductive. She wasn’t asking me to follow her into the bathroom for a quick fuck. No, she was tired and deep in thought, cavalier about my presence because I’d been cavalier about hers.

  The shower sputtered twice before it hissed.

  I caught sight of her phone. It was unlocked.

  “You told Mandy and Selma I was sick, right?” she called.

  “Yeah,” I replied, setting up location tracking between our devices.

  “Good. Want to keep the story straight.”

  I stood outside the doorway. She was down to her underpants, leaning into the stall with her hand under the water, waiting for it to get hot. Trying to avoid the peaks of her breasts, I looked down. The plain cotton fabric rode up the front of her cleft on the bottom, and hung at the line of her hips at the top. My eyes did laps around the shape of her underwear until the weight of her stare brought me back to her face.

  “Are you trying to get me to ask for a fuck?” I asked. “Because it’s working.”

  “If I wanted to fuck, you wouldn’t have to ask.” The room filled with steam. She bent down to get her underwear off and stopped with her fingers hooked in the sides. “You can come in, but if you can’t stand the sight of me in my own bathroom, you can wait outside.”

  I sat on the toilet, averting my eyes before I did something stupid.

  She went behind the curtain. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “What you said to me before you left.”

  “I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”

  “You were right. I’ve taken you for granted.”

  “Yeah, well, in a few months I’ll realize that and get a lawyer.”

  If she had a twinge of doubt about the end of our deal, her voice didn’t betray it.

  Was that supposed to hurt as much as it did?

  “I set up location tracking on your phone.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t like not knowing where you were. I’m a controlling asshole. You can divorce me for that too.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Selma thought you were interesting,” I said.

  “Selma suspects I was part of the GAC. She’s not interested. She’s curious.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  Water splashed behind the curtain. Plastic clicked as if a shampoo bottle snapped closed.

  “What happens when she finds out that I’m not anymore? And I’ve got nothing but a rich husband and talent under the hood? Fucking pathetic.”

  It wasn’t pathetic, but what was it? She rarely talked about herself or her career. My job was to buy out her father’s company and sign divorce papers.

  That was going to change starting immediately.

  “Maybe art’s not your thing,” I suggested.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Hear me out,” I insisted as if she had a choice. “Maybe you’re at your best doing fashion. Maybe you got a whole other skill set and talent from your father. So when we get control of Papillion—”

  “I don’t want Papillion.”

  She shut off the water.

  “I’m sorry?” In the damp air, under the sizzle of the shower, I couldn’t have heard her right.

  “It’s not mine.” Her hand stuck out from behind the curtain. “Can you grab the towel?”

  “That was the reason you got into this with me.” I handed her the thin white cloth.

  “Yeah. I know.” The curtain vibrated when she dried her hair, then stilled as it ran along her skin.

  I had to be misunderstanding her.

  “So am I buying it up or no?”

  “You’re not.” She slapped open the curtain. The towel was tied under her arms and her wet hair hung to her shoulders in waves. Leaning on the sink, she plucked her toothbrush out of her glass.

  “Can I ask why? Since I started already?”

  “It’s not who I am anymore. It’s Bianca’s mess. Let her clean it up.”

  “You are charmingly unstable.”

  “I was wrong about everything,” she continued as she squeezed out toothpaste. “Nothing I wanted was ever actually mine.” She brushed her teeth, stopping with a mouthful of foam to speak. “I’m entitled to nothing.” Brush. Stop. “Doesn’t matter what my name is.” Brush. Stop. “Papillion. Crowne.” Brush. Spit. “Lady McFuckstick.”

  My laughter was inappropriate. I wasn’t matching her seriousness with my own.

  But she smiled and wiped her mouth. “See, I knew you had a sense of humor.”

  Uptight Logan didn’t know how to have a good time. Never went outside the lines. Kept his head so far down on his work, he couldn’t see anyone around him and was never seen. I’d cultivated that image as if it was part of my job, and now she was surprised when I laughed at a corny joke.

  She’d been everything to me, and I’d made sure I was no more than a husband to her.

  “I want to know you,” I said. “Really know you.”

  “No, you don’t.” With that, she went to her bedroom.

  I followed like a puppy hungry for attention, helplessly watching my owner yank pajamas out of a drawer when I wanted to be taken out for a walk.

  “Turn around,” she said, about to drop her towel, and like a dog trained to sit, I did it.

  This wasn’t the story I told myself about who I was. I was in charge. I ran the show. But here I was, staring at a painting of a nude woman sitting on the toilet, clipping her toenails. I got close enough to see each brushstroke. I couldn’t tell if it was garbage or a masterwork, but it was Ella’s, and her presence was in the gestures.

  “I want you to give me a chance,” I said. “You think I don’t listen, but I do. I’ve listened to the tone of your voice change from excited to bored. I’ve listened to the way you agree to do things you don’t care about. You’re like a woman waiting in line at the DMV, just trying to get through it. It’s going to change, Ella. All of it. I want to know who you are.”

  I turned around as she was pulling on a T-shirt. The neck stretched and her head popped through.

  She smoothed down her hair. “I didn’t say you could turn around.”

  “You put the bottoms on first. I want to know that. Your warm socks are on the bed, so they go on after the shirt. I want to know that. I want to know the noise you make when you’re sleeping. I want to know what soap you like, how you sit when you clip your toenails, how you brush your hair in the morning. I want to know how to take care of you so I can be there when you need me.”

  Her neck undulated when she swallowed. I’d said a lot. Too much. Way too much. I was out on a limb, and it was bending under my weight.

  “What happens when you don’t like what you learn?” she asked with her arms crossed. “Because you won’t.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  Her jaw set and her mouth tightened for a moment before she uncrossed her arms and threw open the armoire to pull out a black leather jacket. She shrugged it on over her pajamas and yanked an empty bag out of the bottom of the closet. “Let’s go, Logan.”

  “Where—”

  Before I could finish, she crossed to the working side of the space. Still leashed like a puppy dog, I followed. She threw open a cabinet and filled the duffel bag with spray paint cans.

  “For a guy running a gabillion dollar company,” she said, shaking a can with a click-click-click and discarding it, “you can’t see the big picture.” Red. Blue. Black. “How I put my pants on has nothing to do with who I am or the shit I’ve done.” Zipping the bag with a single, loud screech, she threw it over one shoulder. “So let’s start with that and see how you like it.”

  I held out my hand. “Let’s start with me carrying the bag.”
<
br />   With a knowing smile, she swung the bag around and let go. It landed at my feet with a clatter.

  I picked it up. “Lead the way.”

  At the back door, she jammed her bare feet in a pair of black boots. Her pajama legs bunched unevenly at the calves. The carelessness of it, the in-betweenness, was intimate in a way that made me want to slide the pajamas down and fuck her with her boots on.

  Ready for anything, and satisfied in my role as both puppy dog and pack horse, I followed her out into the night.

  29

  ELLA

  He wanted to know me. Sure. Logan Crowne with tons of money and the perfect family wanted to know Ella Papillion the orphan who’d lost everything because she couldn’t keep her shit together. Mr. Straitlaced who’d never broken a promise wanted to meet the woman who was breaking her promise to her father. The guy who’d lied one time and felt like shit about it every day until he lied about his marriage to me wanted to know a professional liar.

  This guy.

  I had to admire his willingness to go where I explicitly told him he didn’t want to go. It took a strange kind of courage to trust me when I was so untrustworthy.

  Once he was in the back alley, I pulled the telescoping ladder from under the stairs.

  “We’re going to the roof of the building.” I snapped the ladder open a few rungs.

  He looked up. The corner of the billboard was visible from where we were standing. “And then?”

  “Then we do stupid shit we’ll be sorry for.”

  He blinked. Considered. Shrugged. “Sounds good.”

  I opened the ladder fully and hooked the top to the roof edge. I went up it as if I’d done it a million times before—which I had—and Logan came after me without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Here we are,” I said, showing him my little rooftop lounge. “It’s not a mansion in Bel-Air, but you can see all the way to the Hollywood Bowl.”

  “I like it.”

  “You’re in luck.” I craned my neck to check out the towering, brightly-lit billboard. Obviously, no one had ponied up the money to buy an ad. The plywood was visible between three huge stripes of shredded white paper. It looked like a jar with the label half peeled off. “We’re between last month’s deodorant and next month’s action movie. Reduced guilt vandalism.”