REPRESENTED

by K'Anne Meinel

  Why couldn’t she remember her password or how to even turn on the computer? It took several attempts before she figured out how to get on the computer. She knew that she knew how to get on the computer she just couldn’t put it in any semblance of order. It was like having a word on the tip of her tongue and being unable to spit it out. She knew things but they weren’t always where she wanted them to be when she wanted them there. The doctors said it was brain damage but one had said she was amazingly lucky at the extent of her injuries that she wasn’t paralyzed or brain dead. She sighed, she was sick of doctors. Exasperated she tried Cassie’s name on the computer and much to her amazement was able to get into it. She couldn’t remember ever changing it to this and thought perhaps it was an error in judgment on her part. She then realized it wasn’t the main computer that she was on but a limited access part of it instead, she had set that up so that Cassie could use the computer any time she was here visiting. Scratching her head where the hair had begun to grow back and the bone regrown in spots she thought really hard about what the main password might be.

  Staring at C.A.T. something niggled at her brain. She knew the processor up there didn’t fire on all cylinders and might never again. It was frustrating. She knew it might be permanent too. She glanced at the reflection in the fish tanks glass at her face. Basically it looked the same but a different sameness, minor alterations to her face told her of changes she didn’t like. She liked the wink look but at the same time thought of it as though she were a stroke victim. Her nose was subtly different and better in some ways. She was still pretty, that had worried her for a while, that Cassie would be horrified when the bandages came off but the plastic surgeon who had set her bones in her face had done a terrific job, the fact that there were many new and recent beautiful pictures of her taken had helped him do justice to the damaged face.

  Cassie, she had stayed by her side faithfully thought this all. Dammit, it could so easily of been Cassie who had been home when they intruders made it into the house. They had been set on destroying the place when Karin had discovered them. She still remembered their voices although she had told the police and the F.B.I. that she remembered nothing. She unfortunately remembered almost everything of that day and night as she subsided into the excruciating pain she had been subjected to. The voices had been distinct, female….

  “You should use a crowbar”

  “A baseball bat is better”

  “But a crowbar is harder”

  “But with a baseball bat I can get a better grip and it won’t break my nails”

  What female had a grudge against her? Against Cassie? Why had they been sent? Sure there had been a few subtle warnings about renewing a contract with Kreske but she knew Elliott had handled that. He would have been stupid not to.

  Suddenly as she stared at C.A.T. who had decided to clean his fur she realized the password: Savannah, now if she could only remember how to spell it. Three attempts and she locked herself out of the computer. She had to restart the computer and finally spelled the password appropriately and with a capital letter at the start. She was relieved when it booted up properly after that. Quickly she got on line and into a chat-room where she deliberately signed in.

  ‘Rep-Girl’ was her call sign, corny she knew but she hadn’t been the one to choose it originally.

  “hey” came an immediate typed greeting.

  She saw it was from ‘Rep-boy’ and was relieved. He must have been monitoring the site to see when or if she ever came on again. She typed rapidly and soon had a few answers as well as a couple of things set in motion in no time.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “Playing hard ball” she typed in response.

  “K K, on its way” he responded and signed off.

  “What’s that?” a voice over her ear had her jumping a foot and banging her sore arm on the desk.

  Swearing under her breath she turned to see a sleepy and disgruntled Cassie standing there looking cute but angry. She reached to shut off the computer but Cassie was quicker and grabbed her arm looking at the short conversation.

  “What does that mean info Nashville? Is this some kind of code?” she looked accusingly at Karin.

  Karin felt her anger rising and tried the breathing exercises that she had practiced with several of the moron doctors who didn’t understand the pain she was in or the reasons for her anger. She wasn’t exactly sure of all her reasons for her anger either. Sometimes the breathing helped; mostly it pissed her off that she even found it necessary. This was Cassie though and she saw the hurt in her beautiful eyes and wanted to alleviate that. “I needed some information about what happened and as you all have kept most of what happened to me a secret from me I had to find out some way. I was going to check newspaper accounts next.”

  “We controlled the newspaper accounts, Don promoted it all as you requested” Cassie said sarcastically annoyed at the whole situation. It was the middle of the night and finding Karin gone from their bed had frightened her. She found herself frightened a lot these days. She was afraid of losing Karin, she was afraid of going anywhere without her. The trips to the hospital with different cabs had unnerved her until she hired a car service to pick her up and drop her off every day.

  “I requested?” Karin asked genuinely surprised. It sounded like her though, she would have capitalized on it had she been in Don’s place.

  “Babe, come back to bed, it’s too soon for this” Cassie indicated the computer.

  “I’d like to know, could you please tell me what you found, what happened, the doctors wouldn’t tell me either, I need to know” she pleaded as she turned to sign out of the chatroom and turn off the computer. Her typing speed had suffered from the attack as well; she was stiff and her fingers not nearly as flexible. There was a lot she had to come back from. The attack had been very brutal and why she hadn’t died from it no one knew. She thought she knew though, she was just that stubborn.

  Cassie sighed. The doctors all agreed that the severity of the attack must be kept from Karin. The pictures were in police reports and the F.B.I. File and only those with a need to know could access them. Since Cassie was such a big star and Karin her fiancée they had been afforded F.B.I. help, but only to a point. They had nothing to go on and it was thought a random home invasion but that didn’t warrant the absolute destruction of the place or the savagery that they had accosted Karin with. She sat down pushing C.A.T. over as he wasn’t done cleaning and sitting up in a way that allowed her to shove him. He didn’t scare her so much with Karin home.

  “I came home from my trip and coming inside the place was trashed. Everything was ripped off the walls, slashed, broken, and thrown helter-skelter. Your SUV was keyed and the tires slashed although they said a knife keyed it so it was probably the same knife. I found you trying to walk to the kitchen and you must have heard me calling you, you fell into my arms and passed out. You had blood dripping down your face from a cut along your forehead. Your eyes were puffy from the breaks of your cheekbones and nose. Your teeth were mostly gone. The hair on your head was matted with blood. Your arm was broken, the other badly bruised and dislocated at the shoulder, and there were cuts all along both of them. You had broken ribs and a broken leg. You should have had more breaks; they didn’t know why you didn’t with the number of blows they could see on your body from the bat. The bruises matched up perfectly to the head of the bat. There was blood all over that spare room where you were in the recliner. They duct taped your mouth with pink tape that read ‘muff diver’ on it in black sharpie. Your wrists had been duct taped together but somehow you got it off your mouth and gnawed through the tape on your wrists. How you managed to get up with the amount of blood loss you had amazed everyone. You nearly died” she drew in a raggedy breath remember the sight of her lovely face covered in welts and bleeding “I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you.”

  Karin leaned back in her comfortable chair remembering that time. She told Cassie something she hadn’t
told any of her therapists or doctors “I was awake the whole time they hit me, I could hear and feel and taste each blow. It was two women and they debated about using a crow bar over a bat.”

  Cassie stared in horror imagining how it would be to stay awake for all that and hear them saying that, the pain that Karin must have gone through!

  “I prayed to pass out but I stayed awake as they tied me up, my arm was basically useless anyway, guess that was the one that was broke” she shrugged, grateful she could shrug; there had been a time she couldn’t.

  “But why, is it the people you warned me about? The ones who wanted me to sign again with Kreske’s or someone else?”

  Karin shrugged again and shook her head “I honestly don’t know. Elliott knows what would happen if I had died. He’d be destroyed and not just him but many others who know by my being kept alive how it would benefit them. They’d not benefit if I died or someone close to me died.” She looked meaningfully at Cassie.

  Cassie shivered. The few subtle notes she had gotten since the attack held more ominous portending’s than she knew. She told Karin about them.

  “Did you keep them?” Karin asked suddenly interested.

  “I gave them to the F.B.I. they never said anything about them.”

  Karin sat there wondering if she should have gone to the police all those years ago, would this be an issue now? She didn’t know but if the wrong person found out what she knew they wouldn’t hesitate to blackmail some very dangerous people and all hell would break loose. However, perhaps there was more to it than she knew. They knew if she died or someone close to her like Cassie or her sons got hurt that there would be repercussions. She knew there had been hints in certain publications that would have certain people upset at this point, that had been months ago.

  “Why don’t we go to the F.B.I. with what you know?” Cassie asked naively.

  “I don’t know who I would trust other than you at this point, I don’t want to lose the only leverage I have. I don’t think you realize the reach they truly have. They have more money than you can imagine. I never wanted that, I just wanted to be left alone. They wouldn’t be foolish enough to do this. I am a valuable asset to keep me alive. Killing me would set in action things they don’t want.”

  “But if you went to the F.B.I?”

  “For all I know they have plants in the F.B.I. too, I know ‘conspiracy theories’” she saw the look Cassie had given her of doubt. “I don’t think it’s them though, this isn’t really their style.”

  “So what was that about” she thumb pointed at the now quiet computer.

  “Just a fishing expedition, you have to set out bait to fish well.”

  “Care to explain?” Cassie was enjoying the first normal conversation with Karin in months although the subject matter was far from normal.

  “I sent a message to a competitor who is also a friend to get me details that the police or even the F.B.I. would naturally not share with me, the victim, or you the fiancée. They take information, they don’t give it. I want to see if I can figure out something, anything, and if this” she indicated her brain “works, maybe I can keep it from happening again.”

  “I still think you should go to some authority and tell them what you know.”

  Karin shook her head “I’m as much at fault after all this time you know, I too might go to jail.” She saw the look on Cassie’s face. She was suddenly exhausted; it had been a long day. “Let’s see what I find out, let’s get you back out there performing. The best revenge is success.”

  It took months of therapy for Karin to walk normally, to be able to use all her limbs properly. Some stiffness would always remain but the day she didn’t need a nurse anymore made her happy. She couldn’t justify keeping them on and she didn’t want Cassie to know they needed body guards so she reluctantly let them go. When another note arrived for Cassie to reconsider her contract Karin had a guard stationed at their door. No one was allowed up in the elevator without a prior notice, no one, not even anyone who worked there. The guard was under strict orders to take down anyone he or she wasn’t informed about. It nearly cost Carl a beating when he had brought up a package for Karin. The warning went through the staff in the building, stay away from Karin Myers apartment.

  “What are we going to do, you need to get back on the road and I’m going stir crazy sitting here” Karin said as she sipped her drink on the balcony petting C.A.T. who insisted on sharing her chair. D.O.G. was sitting nearby occasionally sitting up to get his share of petting. It was the longest amount of time Karin had spent ‘home’ with either of her pets and they were taking full advantage of the fact.

  “I don’t mind spending time home here with you” Cassie told her, it was really nice except for Karin’s quick temper. She curbed it but sometimes slipped and hurt Cassie’s feelings. She had to admit though she was becoming stir crazy, she missed singing, she missed the crowds, the energy. She had a large stack of possible songs though and talked with the band members who had all taken ‘temporary’ gigs while waiting for her to decide what she was going to do. They understood that Karin was her first priority.

  “Admit it, you are sick of this” she gestured at the apartment behind them. It was slowly getting the ‘lived in’ look as Karin opened her boxes and combined her Milwaukee home with her New York one.

  “I wouldn’t say that” Cassie hedged. They did go out, they walked places, but Karin was constantly looking over her shoulder wondering when or if someone was watching them. Their guard was always within a few feet of them at all times and this was annoying Cassie, she didn’t like living like this she didn’t want to worry but Karin seemed comforted by knowing someone was guarding her, or them.

  Karin looked at her sardonically. She was going stir-crazy, her mind wasn’t as active as it had been a year ago but even she could see that Cassie should be out there performing. She spent a lot of time reading, sometimes having to re-read paragraphs as her concentration wasn’t quite there, not like before. She sighed and Cassie looked at her “of all the things I miss, I miss my mind the most.”

  Cassie laughed. It was good to have some of Karin’s characteristics intact but they both knew she wasn’t the same woman she had been a year ago. She was colder in some ways, less likely to use her razor sharp intelligence or wit. Now she got angrier, quicker. Her frustration was always right below the surface. She was also extremely paranoid, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was still out there waiting to attack them, waiting to harm them. Her fear was that Cassie was next, they were just patiently waiting. She had shared that fear once with Cassie but she had blown it off as Karin’s fear, not her own. Cassie was just grateful that despite the long journey back that Karin was alive, fairly healthy, but with her.

  Don had been fairly anxious to get her going as well. He had kept busy with all the other details, the fan organizations, the jet business, but the money making machine that was Cassie Summers was not in motion and it was driving him crazy. He had all these ideas and he felt stuck in a rut. He had other clients but none as big or with as much potential as Cassie Summers. He also worried that Karin would want to take over again. He knew she had skills he could only imagine but so far she had only occasionally made suggestions, nothing too confrontational but still he worried. Karin Myers was a legend in her own right, her ‘retirement’ no one had bought but her savage attack had made many wonder if she would ever be back.

  Karin may not be back 100% but it didn’t stop her from thinking. She had plans that she had suggested to Don but he didn’t act on it as she would have in his position. She felt he should push Cassie more to perform, to get out there, to appear at the events that had invited her. Her excuse that Karin needed her wasn’t valid anymore. With that in mind she turned to Cassie “you need to stop hovering, you need to get out and get singing. What’s the point of that stack of songs building up if you don’t use them?” Karin had to admit hearing Cassie sing in the living room on her guitar and the keyboard K
arin had insisted she buy was beautiful. She had gifted her with a computer that allowed her to record her own music, add tracks, other instruments, and her beautiful voice. It allowed her to get it down and play with it, she spent a lot of time practicing, sending out samples over the internet to the band members for their thoughts and input. They had enough songs after this year off to release several records as well as revamp their entire concerts.

  “I’ll get out there after…” she stopped herself. Karin was better; she knew though that the thought of going anywhere without Karin was what was stopping her if she was fair enough to admit it. The thought that someone could come into their home and do what they had done again was what frightened her.

  “Babe, I don’t need a babysitter anymore, I haven’t in quite a while. I’m safe here; all I go out for is physical therapy.” Karin had done a lot of water therapy which involved her entire body and while some of the stiffness might never leave the joints or limbs her body had benefited from the laps that she did.

  “Why don’t you go with me?” Cassie asked for the millionth time, they had had this very conversation many times over the preceding months.

  “I will, just not now” Karin told her surprising them both. “Let Don set up a tour for you, maybe get all those songs recorded and out there. Go get the guys up here and start recording!”

  “You’ll go with us on tour?” Cassie asked to verify, she was suddenly excited by the idea of getting the songs she had been playing with on tape. Not just her own but the ones from the stable of writers they now worked with under her companies. There were some real good ones in there she was certain could go to number one. Not just one but several!

  Karin nodded, “maybe not right away, let’s see where we are when you get those recorded” she thumb pointed back into the apartment at the stack of songs on the coffee table where Cassie’s little corner of music was set up. She really needed a room for all her stuff since the cat and dog interfered with keeping it neat, it was why Karin had begun going through her things and placing them around the apartment so they could turn that bedroom into a recording studio and still have a guest room.