“So,” I say, “what was the ‘um’ you mentioned before about why you’re back here?”
Tapping her glass on the table, she takes a breath. “Ah, well. I had to …” She takes a sip of her beer. “Had to break off my engagement.”
That stung. I’m sure it showed on my face. “Hmm,” I say. “That’s, um … too bad.”
“No,” she says. “Well, it’s for the better. Only bad that it got there in the first place.”
“Can only imagine.”
“Took me too long to realize he was dating his idea of me: Jennifer, modeling exec from Chicago; not Jennifer, the woman who likes the Cure and Twin Peaks. It got so much worse when he found my name was on Joie de Vivre. I got the impression he started thinking I was a Laura Palmer and had some secret life up at One-Eyed Jack’s.” She scoffed. “Part of why I’m here.”
“Sorry. That’s so …”
“Exactly.”
“That’s only part?”
“Yeah. You’re not going to believe it.”
“Try me.”
“Notes for songs you never wrote.”
“What?”
“When, um …” She takes a deep breath. “You were always writing a lot of notes. Lyrics. Bits and pieces. About us.”
“How did you get those?”
“Took ’em. When I left.”
I look down into my drink, and swish the ice around. I take a drink, and only then can I look back up. “I’m surprised you didn’t burn them in effigy.”
“I tried to explain it to Wendy. Who cannot find out I’m here.” She waves a finger at me. “As pissed as I was at times, I realized you saw me in some way no one else had. Has. I could see myself in your songs. I might not have liked what I saw every time, but at least it was real. Even if it was a catfight song.”
“I never wrote a catfight song.” I shake my head. “You were sure I would. Never even occurred to me.”
“Nothing,” she says, stroking her forehead, her hand hiding her face. “Stupid.”
“Okay,” I say. “So you read some old song notes. Then …”
“I’d been planning on coming back to see Wendy for a while. But after what happened with my ex-fiancé, I took off without telling anyone. I think the songs might have nudged me. That’s the only reason I’m here with you. You were a cold bastard. I hated you.”
“I. Yes, I was. I don’t even—”
“Don’t. Just don’t. I can’t hear any lies right now, okay? It’s good to see you, but only if you’re honest.”
“Completely honest then. Promise.”
“But not too honest, okay. Not yet. I’m still feeling a bit … raw.”
“So I’ll tell the truth and only the truth. But not the whole truth. Fine. Only do the same for me, okay?”
She smiles wryly. “Yes, Jonathan,” she says, tapping the back my hand with a finger. “Honesty. To lay some out: It almost killed me when I had to break my engagement off. I loved him. But I had to choose between being me and trying to live up to being someone I’m not. I have to imagine that what you—No.” She shakes her head. “No. I don’t need to hear that—only that you know what that feels like. You do know, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Nodding gravely, she looks out the window. “Enough truth telling. Too much is toxic.”
Thus you slam the door on me. But you should know you make me feel again. So strongly I can hear music. Now you demand silence. Oh, girl, if only …
Picking up her empty beer glass, she stares at the bottom and swirls it. “Empty.”
“That’s your third one,” I say.
“So? You’ve had three,” she says, holding up my glass, jiggling the ice at the bottom.
“So nothing,” I say, taking my glass from her hand and draining the last liquid from it. “Want to get out of here?”
“Sure.”
“Where do you want to go?” I ask.
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care?”
She shakes her head.
“At all?” I ask.
Arching an eyebrow, she shakes her head a bit slower this time, as if she’s sending out a code she’s counting on me grasping.
“Where’s your car?”
She points. “That way. Couple of blocks.”
“Here,” I say, holding out my hand. “Give me the keys.”
“I’m not drunk,” she says. “Now, where am I taking us?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Oh, no,” she says. “I don’t trust you.”
“Oh,” I say, gripping an imaginary handle over my heart. “Let me take out the knife.”
She picks up the empty box of covered espresso beans. “You devoured half of this. And I’m supposed to trust you?”
I cock my head. “The loft.”
“The loft?”
“I’ve got music. Coffee. Noshes for later.”
She bites her lip. “Jonathan, I don’t …”
“Don’t what?”
She reaches out and squeezes my hand. “Nothing. But I can’t stay long.”
“I’ve got things going on too, so I can’t hang too late either.”
Towing me behind, she leads the way out the door.
You already know what you did for me, don’t you? Now you need it too—to feel what we had again. Oh, Jennifer.
She leads us to a car I don’t recognize, and somehow it surprises me that it’s not her old beater.
“New car to go with the new job,” I say.
“Rental. Haven’t been home yet.”
I “huh” in agreement and don’t ask why not; I can’t risk waking up some unpleasant memory that would send this night skittering off into a heap of lost last chances. While we’re driving, we decide to chat about a lot of not much, but as we draw closer to the loft, the chatter slows until we’re staring straight ahead in silence. Please be gone, Scott. Without a word, we park, enter the building, and climb the stairs to the loft. I take out the keys.
“Is it like we imagined?”
“Close,” I say. “You’ll see.”
“Scott here?”
“No idea. Haven’t seen him since this afternoon.”
“Good.”
I open the door and step in, turning on the lights.
She follows me in and stares. “My god. I don’t recognize the place.”
“We’ve done some minor improvements in the last year and a half or so.”
“Yes,” she says, “all of them—everything you said you’d do. The drapes. And that balcony. The bedrooms—no … ‘sleeping dais.’ That was a favorite.”
“I know,” I say, hoping she’ll ignore the angel on the “Love Will Tear Us Apart” poster.
She runs across the floor and up the stairs. I watch as she stops at the top of the stairs, turns, and throws a kiss out to the loft.
“Like it, Evita?” I ask.
“Don’t cry for me.” She vanishes.
“Jennifer,” I call, “what are you doing?”
“Seeing who you really are.”
I stroll up the stairs and throw open the drapes. She’s kneeling on my bed, holding up a blue button-up shirt with the sleeves cut out from the body in a wide oval.
“Yep,” I say. “Yours.”
“You kept this?”
“No. Just didn’t throw it out.”
“There a difference?”
“Vast.” My heart’s racing as I lean farther and farther over the lip of a precipice that falls all the way to that bed, with her. I have so many songs I’ll write about this. About everything it means. I can hear them. My mouth twitches.
Scott, don’t you dare walk in right now.
Jennifer drops it next to the bed, which she turns to sit on. “A rea
l bed.” She bounces on it. “It’s a lot like I had imagined it. But that shirt. I mean, really?”
“It’s not like it was under my pillow or anything like that.” I sit down next to her.
I catch the merest smile flickering on her lips.
I hear the first song; it’s about being vulnerable and needing to be safe with someone you trust. Loving her.
Lying back, I reach out to stroke her palm with a finger.
“Jonathan,” she says, “I’m not …”
“Not what?” I ask, sitting up, looking at her.
The next song’s about taking advantage of the vulnerability of someone who trusts you.
“This is very … confusing.”
I pull a finger along her jaw. She holds her breath until my finger slips off her chin.
The song after that explores the hurt that betrayal causes.
“Don’t,” she whispers, looking away.
“What’s confusing?”
The next song explores a couple’s downfall. Even if he can’t help himself. Even if she can’t. Suffering for her.
“Life,” she says. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
She starts to stand
I guide her back next to me.
She goes without resistance.
The next song’s about doing something wicked when you’re not a wicked person, when you don’t mean to—when you can’t stop yourself.
She touches my cheek, shaking her head.
It’ll explain the wickedness. Plead for understanding; that she’s the key. And he can’t lose it. Not again. Turning her into lyrics, melody, and rhythm. Preserving her. Us.
I kiss her. Her tongue burrows into me.
But he can stop this time. No matter his loss.
“Jennifer,” I say, pulling back. “It’s late. We’ve had a lot to drink. Why don’t I go sleep on the couch? You can sleep here.” I pat the bed.
She looks as startled as she did the night she gave me that hand massage, when I said no.
“I don’t like the songs we’re writing,” I say.
Chapter 52
Sweep It All Away
—Jennifer—
I slip out of the loft as soon as I wake up, and I head to my parents’ place. I don’t know what to tell Wendy about what nearly happened last night—especially since I’m making the drive of shame I would have made the next morning anyway: clothes tossed on, hair mussed, makeup smeared, no fresh pair of panties.
We only kissed. Once. Nothing more.
So why do I feel ashamed? So scudgy.
“God. I so need a shower.”
After making one last turn, I’m driving down my parents’ street.
Please, Mother, be gone. I can’t do discussion right now. I don’t know why I’m here, don’t know what happened last night, and don’t know what to expect now. So please, please, please—no mother. No stepdad.
I see the house. No lights. Both cars gone.
“Yes!” I slap the dashboard. “Empty house. Lucky Jennifer.”
I park up the street, let myself in with my old key, and make straight for the shower. Turning on the water, I kick off my shoes, strip last night’s clothes off, and step into the warm stream.
“Oh, that feels sooooo good.”
I wash—my hair, and face, my body; I wash away every particle of what nearly happened last night.
What the hell was that all about, girl? Fly two thousand miles to get him into your panties? And he says no. Again.
Stepping out of the shower, I dry off.
“What are you doing here, anyway?”
I stare at myself in the mirror.
“Well. I don’t know either.”
I’ve no clothes here so have to put yesterday’s back on. Then I walk out into the living room. She said she’d fixed the place up when I was gone—remodeled—but everything looks the same. Maybe she meant she remodeled my old room. Fixed it up.
Nope. Can’t do that right now.
I drop myself into my stepdad’s ugly yellow chair and flip on the tube. Stupid daytime talk shows: Maury. Jenny Jones. Click, click, click, and the channels flit past. Weight-loss infomercial. Black-and-white cowboy movie. Soap opera. A bad music video. A shampoo advertisement. Good Day Chicago. I stop clicking.
Why not? See what’s been going on.
While watching an empty-headed blonde blabber on about some community organization in Humboldt Park, I think about my old room. My mother told me that she cleaned it up, made it into a guest room. Wonder what she threw out and where she put whatever’s left—the things she thought mattered. Whatever that could be.
The blonde looks earnestly at the TV audience. “And now some breaking news about Charlene Pollard, the model who was thought to have been murdered three years ago. Her death was ruled an accident; she apparently slipped off her balcony after an afternoon of drinking.”
The scene cuts to a cop behind a microphone.
“Charlene Pollard: Mystery Solved” appears in white at the bottom of the screen.
“Charlene? What mystery? You slipped. Fell,” I tell the TV, explaining it to them.
The cop says, “When the current tenants decided to remodel the apartment Ms. Charlene Pollard occupied with Mr. Barthes, her companion, this was found, hidden in a bookcase.” He holds up a small camera. “At first they considered it unremarkable. Probably a forgotten surveillance camera. But when the contractor found cables still attached, he examined further and saw they went to a remote recorder, and there he found a videotape. He played it to see if there was anything recorded. What was there caused him to bring it to the police. It shows the model Charlene Pollard’s last minutes and reveals that she was neither murdered nor had an accident. Rather, she committed suicide, and this videotape is her suicide note.” He holds up a compact videotape.
Charlene?
“Why didn’t her companion, Mr. Barthes, present the tape to the police?” a reporter asks.
“He has told us that he was unaware of it. It seems Ms. Pollard either had it installed secretly or found it there. That’s something we’ll probably never know.”
“Did she say she was trying to frame Mr. Barthes? Was it a domestic situation?” a second reporter asks.
“Though the circumstances are suggestive of that, there is nothing on the tape that indicates she was trying to harm Mr. Barthes. Her reasons, rather, suggest depression. Or extreme disappointment.”
“She wasn’t depressed!” I yell at the cop. “She wasn’t! No. She partied with us. She had fun. Charlene, what did you do?”
“What, exactly, were her reasons?” another reporter asks.
“This is all we can say right now. The tape contains a lead we are currently following up on. We’ll be more at liberty to discuss those details once that has been completely investigated.”
The earnest blonde returns. “We’ll be right here on Fox 32 to keep you informed on all the details as soon as they happen.”
Good Day Chicago returns.
My hands tremble.
There is a sharp knock on my door.
I jerk in the chair, and turn toward the door.
“Chicago Police,” a man’s voice announces.
I’m frozen in place. Why would police be here?
The knock comes again.
“Um, hang on,” I say, tottering to my feet. I walk unsteadily to the door. Opening it, I find two cops standing on the small porch. They are both wearing black leather jackets and have large automatics slung from their hips. Their low-set checker-brimmed hats hide their eyes.
“Um. Yes?”
“Are you Jennifer Gaultier?”
I stare blankly.
“Do you know where we can find her?”
“Me.”
“Me?” the larger officer asks.
“I’m Jennifer. What’s this … I just got into town. I don’t—”
“Did you know Charlene Pollard?”
“Uh,” I say, nodding.
“Can we come in?”
“Uh-huh.”
Turning back inside, I feel as if I’ve floated from my life and into an undiscovered Hitchcock film.
The heavier one introduces himself as Sergeant Luckac, and the other one as Officer McInerney. Officer McInerney leaves while the sergeant explains they found a videotape in Charlene’s old apartment and that I’m the only person Charlene named in the video, other than Mr. Barthes, and that they need me to watch it.
“To see if she said or did anything that warrants further investigation,” Sergeant Luckac says.
Officer McInerney returns carrying a compact VHS player–television, and after setting it up for me, they play Charlene’s suicide note for me.
The soft-focused video reveals the room; there is a dark leather couch, a cherrywood coffee table, and a large-screen TV near the doorway leading to the balcony; the curtain is pulled back. Through the balcony’s glass door is a good view of Chicago on a sunny afternoon. Charlene walks into the scene with two glasses, one in each hand. She stands in front of the camera. Everything about her is long: her legs, her neck, her waist. She’s the idea of a model with arching blonde eyebrows. She gives a model’s smile: wide-mouthed, full of straight, white teeth. She takes a drink from one glass and then from the other.
“Cocktails for the both of us.”
She nods.
“Yes, both. There are two of us here. Can’t you see us? Well, here, let me point us out. Here’s the innocent one, who still tries to believe.” She nods her head to the left. “And the experienced one, who knows there’s no point,” she says, nodding to the right. “One still smiles very sweetly, like she used to; the other fakes it—like Dale Carnegie gone wild. So”—she takes a pair of sips, one from each glass—“can you tell the difference? Can you tell which one is talking now, pouring these cocktails of very expensive booze in the penthouse high above Chicago with the splendid view? The leather sofa, big-screen TV, and cut crystal are the finest. Like you see in the magazines. Oh, I hear you thinking: Wouldn’t it be fabulous to be like that? To live like that? To live like in magazines—perfect and glamorous, always beautiful. Like Dorian Gray, but it’s the world aging for you? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be like me—ageless in my living photograph world?
A Perfect Blindness Page 36