by Marie Turner
And there’re a million answers to his question, answers that become thoughts contemplating along the back of my brain, fully ready to assail the garden-walled world we sit in. I choose the least offensive one.
“I think you’re smart,” I answer.
“Smart?” he asks, as if my response has just been splashed cold across his face.
“Yeah,” I repeat. “Smart.”
“That’s what you think of me,” he says this like a statement rather than a question, but I know it’s a question.
“Yes.” The wind circles around the table and lifts my red hair. I have to pat it down.
“I don’t think that’s true. I think you think I’m,” he pokes his lips out in thought, “evil,” he enunciates the word too perfectly. The little vein in his temple pulses in the dim light.
“Why would you think that?” I’m in a battlefield, arrows flying everywhere.
“Ah, I don’t know, the millions of times you’ve looked at me as if you wished I’d be kidnapped by thugs and beaten to death in some bad part of town.”
“I don’t look at you like that.”
“I should hold up a mirror sometime so you can see yourself. But it’s more than that,” he stops entirely, exhaling to signify he’s done. He leans back in the chair and looks toward the apartment complex. I turn to see what he’s looking at. There’s a young couple in their small apartment on the third floor. The orange glow of their kitchen light makes a silhouette of their shoulders and heads as they eat at a table by the window. I can’t see their faces, but watching their heads lean toward each other over the small table makes me feel uncomfortable.
“So, is it true then?” I ask Robert, feeling the need to change the topic.
“What?”
“That you were a tough guy in school. Did you really lock some guy in the janitor’s closet because he stole your girlfriend?” Discussing Robert’s bad boy days seems far less scary than discussing how I really feel about him.
“Is that what they say about me?” He frowns and smiles, and he’s so pretty that angels could cry. “Let’s see, you’ve worked for me for over two years now—have you known me to ever lock someone in a janitor’s closet?” He tilts his head.
I shrug, but while I’m shrugging I’m thinking that his answer is a non-answer, a way of evading the question, which makes me think he really did lock someone in a closet. But I know better than to press him.
“My dad always told me that I’m a leather jacket on the outside and a flannel shirt on the inside. He likes you, you know.”
“Does he?” I’m distracted enough to lose the image of being locked in a janitor’s closet.
“Yep.” Robert nods slightly.
Unlike Robert, who has authority over me, I can’t pressure him to tell me what else his father said about me, so I lean back in my plastic chair and watch the couple in the apartment window. I can feel Robert’s eyes on my face. The sensation is a knife-blade turned sideways on my cheek. I try not to look back at him.
“He said he thought you were a delightful woman,” Robert adds, his voice matter-of-fact, his torso rising slightly. Even now, Robert looks at me as though he might lean over the table and seize my shoulders, maybe snatch me from my chair, maybe rip off my head—I don’t know. “He said you were a decent person, and decency is rare in people these days. He thinks you have the smile of Rita Hayworth and the face of Olivia Hussey.”
Something clatters inside the cafeteria. A dropped tray? I don’t look in that direction, although I can see through the tinted glass if I want to. Instead, I eye Robert who wiggles a little in his chair.
“He’s a nice man, your father. You think he’ll be alright?”
“I hope so.”
Just then, the double doors spring open behind me and I glance back. Looking around for a place to sit, a lone man stands with his tray in his hands. There are five empty tables around us, but the man looks at Robert and me and mumbles “I’m sorry,” before turning around and heading back inside the double doors.
When I turn back, I ask Robert, “Where did you grow up?”
“Where I grew up isn’t that interesting.”
I imagine how many women would give up her favorite pair of sweats to hear this story.
“I’m sure it is,” I answer.
So Robert tells me his brief history—about living in different foster homes around the Bay Area, first with a family who had six foster children to supplement their income, how they were always hungry, then with a husband and wife that were both police officers who constantly accused Robert of stealing. (Other than the occasional granola bar, he was innocent.) Then he moved in with a family who had teenage girls. This was his shortest stay because despite his tender age, the father locked the girls’ doors at night for fear Robert might sneak into their rooms. But the whole time he talks, I’m thinking in the back of my mind that I need to get the tape back. I need to get the tape back.
“That sounds awful.”
“It was delightful. But it all worked out in the end, just like it all worked out with you.” I’m not sure I’ve heard him correctly. My face gives away my confusion, so he continues. “I didn’t think I’d find an assistant who could put up with me, but here you are.” He gestures towards me. “I had a few before you. They didn’t last more than weeks. The firm usually makes sure that assistants are shared with more than one partner, but once I hired you, I had the firm make an exception.” He pushes the tray aside and leans forward, his elbows on the table. “You know, you do things for me that you think I don’t recognize, that you think maybe I’m not appreciative about. Like the way you determine, based on my mood, whether I want my office door left open or closed when you leave. Not sure how, but you can always tell. Or the way you know which messages to deliver to me even if I’m in a conference call. You’re brave enough to enter my office and hand me that note because you know I’ll want it. The way you know when to check in with me because I need something. It’s like mental telepathy, of the legal assistant kind.”
I didn’t even realize I’d done these things, but as he tells me, the memories settle.
“And the way you dress,” he smiles, as if he’s enjoying some old joke. He points at my clothes and shakes his head. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you the real reason why I make you dress that way.”
“Tell me,” I demand. “I thought you made me dress this way because of meetings with clients and stuff.”
“If I tell you, you’ll have to do something for me,” he bargains.
“Okay.”
“Tell me why you kissed me.” The dim light of the lamppost hits his face. His voice makes me feel as if thousands of horses ride through my chest. I hadn’t prepared for this question. I thought we’d somehow silently agreed never to speak of it again. I scramble, trying to think of something to say, but I’m scourged on the shore of no answers.
“You kissed me,” I retort, although the preposterousness of my suggestion is perched on my nose.
“No, Caroline, you kissed me. Now I know you’d had a little too much to drink, but that kiss came out of nowhere. I just thought, in light of the situation,” he pauses to point at our hospital surroundings. “I thought you’d like to fess up. That way, when my father wakes up, I can give him the full version of what happened.”
“You were going to tell him?” I try not to sound shocked.
“Of course,” he replies. “My dad and I talk freely. I tell him most everything. He’s my best friend.”
I hadn’t expected Mr. Spencer would find out. “I think you were a little tipsy yourself. Maybe you don’t remember the incident very well.” I clear my throat.
“I remember it very well,” Robert articulates. “Aside from constantly worrying about my dad, I haven’t thought about much else.” He eyes me determinedly. The light of the lamp leaves his face and the shadows flicker there again, never hampering his beauty. I wonder how much he’s figured out. Does he suspect? I can feel my face paling. There
’s a cloud of dust whirling in my brain. What do I say?
“Caroline, it’s been a long day,” he says, pressing fingers against his temple. “I’ve been up since midnight last night. I haven’t slept, but even if I had the opportunity, I wouldn’t be able to get certain thoughts out of my head. Like, for instance, why would my assistant, who despises me, although utterly diligent and dedicated to her job,” he concedes, “suddenly decide to kiss me? I can’t make sense of it. I’ve turned it over various ways in my brain, and I just can’t figure it out. I’m logical person, you know, so things I can’t understand tend to preoccupy my thoughts, until I figure them out.”
Feeling skewered, I watch his face. I may be about to have a full-on panic attack. As if frustrated by my lack of answers, he continues.
“I’ve come up with several options.” He looks darkly at me. “The first one is that you were drunk and felt an abstract, disconnected attraction and acted on it.” He looks at me and waits but I don’t speak, so he looks at his hands. “The other option is that perhaps you wanted to harm me in some way.”
Where did all the oxygen go? I somehow avoid grasping my chest although the urge is strong. I shake my head. “Why would I do that?” A question with a question. Good plan.
“Or maybe, between all your contemplating about my villainous nature, you’ve come to the less-wild brained conclusion that you know me well enough to know I don’t possess ragged claws or a reptilian tail. You know who I really am, and you’ve grown accustomed to the natural flights of my disposition as I’ve grown accustomed to yours. Maybe when you wake up in the morning, I’m your first cursing thought. And when you go through your day, whether at home or at the office, you’re aware of me like a fever. And you fret about whether I’m fretting. And at night you wonder what the walls of my house hear. Perhaps, in the midst of all this, you figured that the next reasonable step was to take hold of me in an elevator, twist your fingers in my hair, and kiss me.”
As he awaits my reply, his body looks relaxed but his eyes don’t. I’m certain swords linger behind them, capable of looting out the weakness of the feeble and poking around inside to find answers. My hands shake. The couple in the apartment have removed themselves from the window and the light is out. I wish they’d return.
“Am I making you nervous?” Robert asks.
“No.”
“Caroline,” Robert states, leaning over the table, his face as serious as a starched shirt. “If I had something to tell you, I’d say it. I wouldn’t hide behind foregone conclusions and wild fears. I’d tell you.”
A lawyer moved is an ocean troubled: tense, bereft of negotiation. The worst part of all this is my brain can’t put it all together. It’s like earthworms in there, a mealbin of winding little confused bodies. I can’t quite fathom what Robert’s conveying to me exactly, whether he’s asking me questions, accusing me of something, or telling me how he feels.
“I don’t have anything to tell you,” I say, hearing the vibration of my cell phone in my backpack, which lies on the ground near my feet. The sensation is a mild electric shock. I yank it from my backpack to find a text from Henry:
Too late. Call me ASAP.
I shove the phone back into my bag. Before I can begin to think about what to do first, Robert asks, “What’s the matter?”
And there I am sitting at the table with him, but really, I’m floating down a raging river, a rafter without a raft, a parachutist without a parachute, a pilot on empty with no landing strip in sight. And there are too many things I want to do, like ask Robert what the hell he was saying just then. Maybe confess to Robert while his face turns blood red and explodes with rage? Rush away to call Henry, hold Mr. Spender’s hand upstairs?
“I’ve gotta take care of an emergency,” I say because I can only do one thing at a time, and the biggest problem must be resolved first. “When your dad wakes up, tell him I came to see him, will you?” I ask.
Robert looks sideways at me as I leave. I’m moving so fast I almost don’t hear him quietly call my name.
Chapter 8
“A grandes males, grandes remedies.”
Big troubles call for big remedies.
Outside the hospital on the sidewalk, I yank out my cell phone while cars pass through the intersection looking eager for a place to park. The street is full of amber lights from the Victorian apartments nearby. The air is suddenly cold, and I shiver without a jacket. Henry answers on the first ring.
“Caroline, I’m sorry. I can’t get the video now. If you had told me yesterday, then yes, I could have. But it came in the mail today, and my boss asked me to have his mail hand-delivered to his house. It’s at his house right now… Caroline … Caroline… you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” I hover near the storm drain, which emits heat from somewhere. I sit down on the curb nearby, two parked cars on either side of me, blocking my view of the street. I set my backpack down on the curb and rest my head in my hand.
“I’m sorry, Caroline,” Henry repeats.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Was it one of the firm manila envelopes?”
“Yeah,” I answer, my voice weighing a thousand pounds in my stomach.
“That was the one then. I’d recognize your handwriting anywhere,” Henry says.
“Oh god,” I say. “Is there nothing you can do?”
“I don’t think so. It’s at his house.”
We’re silent for several long seconds while I hear ambulance sirens approaching.
“T’s okay,” I finally say.
When we hang up, I stand to head home, but pause at the emergency room entrance, where the ambulance wails as it parks. Two paramedics jump out, helping a young woman who seems to be in cardiac arrest. One man pumps her chest by hand while the other pushes the gurney into the hospital. After standing there watching the scene unfold, I walk zombie-like toward the bus stop. I make the long journey home: two different buses and a train ride.
When I arrive at my building, I barely notice the dim lights inside Ted’s apartment. Instead, my mind focuses on the problem, the problem that I created, the creation that plagues my brain and has turned into a genuine migraine. With legs that feel like tankers, I ascend the steps to my apartment, enter, and slam the door behind me. I throw my bag on the couch and begin stripping down, not even bothering to put my clothes in the hamper. I just head straight for the shower.
On certain nights, I wish I had a cat, a furry little sympathetic creature that would feel sorry for me after a horrible day. A creature that would purr and remind me that love exists, if only in the feline form. But I’ve created my own house of hell here. I deserve the bruised state of my brain.
With the hot spray of water blasting from my showerhead, I step in and squat down into a sitting position in my tub, letting the water hit my head, my face. I close my eyes and think about death. Not in that woe-is-me way, but in that wouldn’t-a-permanent-vacation-from-life-be-nice way. I don’t want to cry. I’d rather have an addiction to ease the guilt, something really heavy, like heroin or crack or bath salts. But I don’t know the first thing about how to find these drugs, nor do I think they would ultimately help improve my situation, so I opt for crying like a cow sucking its tongue instead. In fact, I sob like a cow. For Robert, for Robert’s dad, for myself because I wish my dad were still alive to tell me what to do. I wallow in the tub until I can’t cry anymore, which isn’t very long because I don’t have the patience for too many tears.
When I’m done, I consider how I’m going to handle things at work tomorrow. What will I say? What will I do?
I exit the shower, throw my clothes in the hamper, and don my fluffy pink robe and blue slippers. I have no answers, but I hear a knock on the door. With dripping wet hair and puffy eyes, I open it to find Ted standing there looking ridiculously manicured. He’s obviously spent the day outside because his skin looks freshly golden, in a way that makes his serial killer eyes fetching. I imagine his studying can often be done
outdoors on nice days. His hair looks freshly barbered, his face cleanly shaven.
“Hey.” He smiles. Then his brows twitch. “What’s wrong?” He leans on my door jam. He likes to lean on stuff. This makes me wonder if Ted Bundy liked to lean on stuff, too. I’m growing so accustomed to seeing Ted leaning on things that I almost feel as though we live in one big house together. Ted Bundy and me.
“Come in,” I invite him. I haven’t even brushed my wet hair, and my pink robe is hideous, but in my current state, I don’t care. “Want some tea?” I ask him.
To be clear, I hate tea, but I keep hoping that someday I’ll find the right tea, make the right brew, and suddenly it’ll be that magical drink that all of England and China are obsessed with. Meanwhile I have a cupboard full of bags.
Ted closes the door behind himself. It’s past 10 PM on my oven clock. Opening the cupboard, I let the boxes of tea fall out, grabbing the purple one as it falls. Then I fill up the kettle with water.
“I heard your door slam, thought I’d stop by and say hello,” Ted stands there, his hands on the hips of his jeans. He looks as if he might fix my kitchen sink or unclog my drain. If he could only plumber my problems away.
“Just an unpleasant day, sorry, didn’t mean to slam it so hard.” I sit down at my kitchen table. “Have a seat.”
Ted sits. The chair leg wobbles underneath him. It’s an old white linoleum table with matching chairs, a decrepit creature snatched straight from the 1950s. It would be cool retro if it weren’t so shabby.
“Tell me about it,” Ted offers. And there he sits, all tanned and good-looking, and I suddenly understand why all those ladies fawned over the serial killer Ted Bundy even after he was convicted for bludgeoning women to death.
“I can’t,” I reply. “If I do, I might cry.”
Ted’s face approaches sympathy. Behind him, my purple couch looks pathetic, the shag brown carpet pathetic, the dingy white walls so very pathetic.