He stopped mid-pace and swung around in the other direction. “That sounds rehearsed. Don’t say that.”
“Then what?”
“Then you say something like, my sister raised me since my mother died when I was three. She had to, because my father was a drunk, yada yada.” He unbuttoned the cuffs on his sleeves and rolled them up to his elbows. “Don’t say drunk, though. Say alcoholic. She’s the only parent I’ve ever known, so I’ve got a pretty accurate idea of the type of person she is, and a murderer isn’t part of that picture, not by a long shot.”
“If you know everything I should say, why don’t you just say it all? I can sit there and chime in once in a while. Nod, or bring up a point now and then.”
“No. The main idea in any press conference is control. You’re going to be the only speaker. More than one person talking means less control, unlocks all sorts of doors you don’t want to see opened. We can contradict each other in the smallest way or say the same thing two different ways, which can confuse reporters or give them opportunity to misinterpret or misquote us. I’m not going to let that happen.”
“So this is all about making sure the reporters don’t say anything detrimental? Why don’t we just release a statement, they can’t argue or interrupt a piece of paper.”
“A statement doesn’t give the appearance of transparency. While I’m on the topic of transparency, never say “no comment”, it’ll blow up in your face. You’re not a celebrity or a politician. You have no idea how much a reporter can spin an innocent “no comment” into something horrible.” He cracked his neck. “So what do you say next?”
“And then…that she gave up her life to take care of me, and it forced her to be more responsible than most people her age?”
He nodded. “And that she would never ever have done what she’s accused of. She wouldn’t have risked it, knowing it would take her away from you. That she’s not that type of person.”
“And then I say the alibi thing?”
“No. You’re going to be speaking uninterrupted for about five minutes. After that, I’ll open the floor for questions for a limited period of time, about another five minutes. Ramble on about all the details right from the start, the reporters will have all the ammunition they need to ask nasty little follow up questions and try to trip you up. Even if we limit the time frame, you can bet your ass those five minutes will be chock-full of tough questions. If you hold back on some details they’ll be forced to ask the basics. They need those basics to be able to file a story, so by holding back we can have some control over what you’re asked. You can say something like, I know for a fact she didn’t do this. It couldn’t have been her, but the police rushed to make an arrest without investigating other viable suspects and angles.”
All this preparation would boil down to a mere ten minutes. It seemed impossible. “So, keep it vague, and eventually one of the reporters will ask how I know for a fact she’s innocent?”
“Basically. Keep in mind this isn’t all about the reporters. They’re not your real audience. Your real audience are the people sitting at home watching TV. Possible jurors, people who’ll look at you and see someone who’s been dicked over by an overzealous police department. If they side with you, they’ll side with Caroline, too. This is about them getting to trust you and believe what you’re saying. That’s what’s most important, here.”
What a daunting task, getting the whole of southern California on my side. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure I was on my own side. “Should Brian be mentioned at some point?”
“What would you say about him?”
“He stalked Caroline, in the beginning. Called her at work, found out her phone number and her email, called and texted constantly. He’d show up places we went and bug her about going out with him. Even came to our condo a few times. She kept turning him down, but he didn’t get the message.”
“I’ve spoken to a few people who can verify that, too. Anything else?”
“He sold drugs. It could have been a customer who killed him, or maybe a supplier, however those things work…is that enough to fill five minutes?”
“Possibly.” He sank onto the couch beside me. Tapped on my knees so I’d turn to face him. I swallowed a lump in my throat that hadn’t been there a moment ago and met his gaze head-on. “Start from the top. By the time we’re finished, practiced a ton, you’re going to have this whole speech committed to memory. No surprises when the time comes. No reason for nerves, because there’ll be no possibility of you tripping yourself up. It’ll be like giving an oral report in high school.”
I’d always hated those.
***
It was dusk by the time Kyle and I had finished. A churning cement sky loomed an inch above our heads as he walked me out to the parking lot. I dug for my keys in my purse as an afterthought, still unused to owning a car.
“Don’t start,” I said, once Kyle got a good look at the Challenger with eyes the size of silver dollars. “I didn’t pick it out. Caroline gave it to me for Christmas.”
“You must have been a good girl to get such a nice car.” He gave the hood of the Challenger the kind of approving smile a teacher gives his favorite student. “I thought about buying one of these but ended up getting a boring Audi. Thought it’d look more mature when I showed up for court or depositions.”
“A car’s a car. Who cares if you showed up with one of these?” He had the confidence to pull it off. Unlike me.
“One day you’ll realize a lot of things have to do with presenting the right image to the world. I’m too young to be taken seriously in my profession, driving something like this. This is the kind of car you’d buy after making partner, when it’s okay to have an ego the size of Texas.”
“You really think people would spend that much time thinking about what you choose to drive?”
His nostrils flared when he laughed, rocking back on his heels. “Are you calling me insignificant?”
“No.” I held the keys up in front of his face, swinging them back and forth like a hypnotist’s clock. You’re getting sleepy. “You want to drive it?”
“Seriously?”
“I’m not territorial about my things.”
He swiped the keys mid-swing and headed for the driver’s side at the same time a car door opened and shut somewhere behind us. I wrenched the passenger’s door open, threw my purse on the floor mat, but Kyle hadn’t gotten in. He stared over the hood as a staccato of clicking heels swelled closer, and when I turned, a woman stood there wearing an ugly flush and a trench coat.
“Hi,” Kyle told her, shutting the car door. “I didn’t expect you until later.”
“Clearly.” I’m sure the smile she shot me had meant to come off as curiously welcoming, but it looked more disdainful than anything. It was the same look I’d seen countless women give to Caroline, a mixture of spiteful arrogance and ill-disguised shock, but I’d never perfected the coolly condescending answering expression my sister owned. Sharp clever eyes and a carnivorous smile. “Who’s your friend?” she asked, her voice sagging with sarcasm.
My eyebrows contracted at the coldness of her tone. I was nobody to her, so why should she feel the need for defensive posturing? I wasn’t worth her efforts.
“This is Katya.” Kyle skirted the hood of the Challenger into the gap between me and the woman I’d become rapidly convinced was his Empress. “Katya, this is Crystal.”
“Katya.” She smiled a little, fingering the strap of her purse. “How…exotic. Are you Russian, or something?” But she said it with the heavy overtones of Russian equals whore.
I slammed the passenger’s door shut and belted my arms across my ribcage, tracing the contours of her fried fake blonde hair with my gaze. “Are you a stripper? The only Crystals I’ve known have been strippers.”
Her eyes bulged, ruining the outline of her heavy liner, but Kyle cut across her retort. “Kat, I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that—”
“She did.” And she was asking for it, insulting me
while wearing leopard print heels. I took the keys from his hand and circled to the driver’s side. “Thanks for going over everything with me.”
“Yeah.” He bobbed his head stupidly, reminding me of cartoon characters trying to shake off little chirping birds circling their heads. “Yeah, I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
I slid into the Challenger’s cabin, watching her watch me through the windshield as I buckled myself in. Maybe the car had me channeling Caroline, her supremely superior aura that washed over her whenever her presence had caused raised hackles. But she would have added a simpering Oh my, look at those lovely heels in the type of voice that could make one feel about two inches tall.
I peeled out of the lot, flipping up the sun visor and knowing Caroline would have also tipped her head back and laughed before telling me she wasn’t so sure she could buy my I’m not territorial about my things line. She would have salivated for the chance to show this woman how insignificant she was, without having even the slightest interest in Kyle.
I didn’t know if it was the PR practice, the car, or the piece of Caroline’s spirit which had recently possessed me, but I’d never been less frightened of my looming crises than I was then, driving home to feed Nicholas.
***
Kat,
What a bitch. I know the type you’re describing, and who the hell even wears leopard print heels anymore? Classless. You may have been right about the stripper thing. If I were you, I’d go out of my way to knock her down a few pegs. Get a little too cozy with her boyfriend or something, it’d drive her batshit. You’ll apparently have to spend a lot of time with Kyle, so I bet every time she sees you with him on TV, her head will explode. He already seems to like you a little more than seems usual in that kind of relationship. How hard could it be? I don’t want to hear a word about me being mean, either, I need to get my kicks somewhere, because Mr. Ferret has been a little depressed these days. Had a meltdown during lunch a week ago and haven’t seen him since.
I’m glad you’re feeling better about this whole media blitzkrieg, even though you’re going to be playing the part of Czechoslovakia. I don’t know much about public speaking, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say do not imagine everyone in their underwear. What retard came up with that line?
Has Jeff mentioned the New Artist Spotlight event to you yet? It’s almost about that time for it to happen, it’s always in late February. I’ve gone with him a few times. I can’t promise it’ll be a ton of fun, but it doesn’t hurt to get yourself out there. If he doesn’t mention it in the coming weeks, you should bring it up. You need to get your foot in the door, and Jeff’s a good way to go about that.
You better name that Challenger sometime soon. I’m going to assume it must be a female name. You never hear about a car named Bob.
C.
***
“You’re getting better.” Professor Lawlis planted his metal leg into the floor and pushed his swivel chair back. “I should be charging you.”
I shook a curtain of hair behind my shoulder. “You wouldn’t. You feel sorry for me.”
“This is what I get for being sexist. Signed myself up for free lessons indefinitely.” He took the guitar from his lap and propped it against his desk. “I saw your sister’s attorney on TV over Christmas break.”
“I did, too. His shoes look even more expensive off camera, in case you wondered.”
“She’s pretty. Your sister, not her attorney. Doesn’t look like the type of girl who’d have to kill her ex to soothe her broken heart. More likely she’d move to the next name on her list.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say aloud how much I wished that had been the case. She could have spared us all a lot of grief and just torched his car. “Have you done a lot of public speaking?”
His eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “No. Public playing.” He knocked on the guitar. “Some public indecency, when I was younger. Public intoxication; I wish I could say that happened when I was younger. But no public speaking.”
“Well, you teach classes. Isn’t that public speaking?”
“I teach overindulged kids an elective course that makes them write lousy heartbreak-soaked lyrics to bad music. A bunch of moron nineteen-year-old boys who wear beanies when it’s a hundred degrees and play at coffee shops. That does not equate to public speaking, not by a damn sight.”
Those students reminded me of another lousy lyricist slash drug dealer who burned to death in his house. “I’m going to have to speak at a press conference for Caroline.”
“And you’re understandably nervous.”
“Way more than understandably nervous.”
“Kid, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t be nervous to do that. You’ll do fine.” He watched me chew my bottom lip for a few beats. “If you could sucker me into free lessons with those big baby doe eyes, you can do anything. It’ll be over before you know it. Talking to reporters with ridiculous hairdos? You’ll have to work harder trying not to laugh. Piece of cake.”
I nodded over the guitar I clutched, staring at the grains running through the wood floor until my vision glazed. After blinking a few hundred times, I looked up at him. “Public indecency?”
“Stupid drunken bet between Army buddies, it’s a long, embarrassing story. Public intoxication after my wife left me. That was a bad year.”
I didn’t know if I could use that opening to dodge his temporarily sidelined defense and score a touchdown, but he wouldn’t have mentioned it if it were that sore a subject, right? “Did she—I mean, how—why did she leave?”
“PTSD.”
“Hers?”
“Mine. A souvenir from Iraq. That and a metal leg.”
I felt my heart migrate into my throat. I didn’t know which was worse, having your leg blown off by a suicide bomber or driving your wife away during the aftermath. I was a grump because of a measly murder accusation—suddenly I felt like I had little right. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.” I wondered if he still loved her, this ex-wife of his, and whether she’d tried hard enough to put the pieces of him back together. A missing leg couldn’t have made her run; he wouldn’t have married a woman that superficial. Had it been nightmares, violent episodes, general crabbiness? I’d heard the horror stories of the war, but never had a living, breathing one stared me in the face. It didn’t seem like he had PTSD, just a healthy dose of cynicism.
He crossed his arms over his paunch. “You didn’t ask. I told. And I’m sorry your sister killed her ex.”
I strummed the guitar strings loudly. “Allegedly.”
“Right.” He grunted through a small smile. “Allegedly. Look who’s all ready to take on the reporters?”
***
“If you ruin that sweater, Gemma’ll kill you,” Kyle said idly, watching me pick at a loose thread on my cardigan.
“If I were Gemma I’d have killed you the moment you sent me out to buy a cardigan,” I countered, shifting carefully on an overstuffed chair in the Four Seasons conference room. The kind of chair that looked comfortable but was so rigid it felt like a boulder.
He cracked his neck, draped his arm over the back of my chair, stared off into space. The buzzing hive of reporters stood just behind the double doors. I wanted the flunkies Kyle had stationed there to keep them closed forever.
“Gemma thinks I’m little orphan Oliver. She loves helping me.”
“You’re twenty-nine. I wouldn’t care that you’re an orphan. Who isn’t?”
“Maybe it’s my boyish good looks.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I rather thought they’d get stuck in the back of my skull.
“You look good.” He patted the back of my chair.
“Thanks.”
“And you’ll do fine.”
The jury was still out on that one.
We sat off to the side of the conference room in a row of chairs hugging the wall. More had been lined up into neat rows before a small stage that held a podium and two other chairs. My own village sq
uare, complete with a guillotine (or microphone). T minus ten minutes until I screwed everything up with my voice alone.
“It sounds like there’s a million of them.”
He followed my gaze to the double doors, but I doubted his mind had conjured the same image mine had: throbbing crowd, clouds of hairspray, shiny bared fangs. “There’s not.”
“But it sounds like it.”
“There’s not.”
“You’re not very soothing.”
“Hey, I tried soothing. You wouldn’t go for it.” He smiled a little at my annoyed grunt. “I’m going to have Gemma sit up there with you. She’s soothing, and a little old lady up there won’t hurt. I won’t introduce her. Let the people wonder who she is.” He caught my chin in his hand. “Look at me for a minute?”
I looked up. He picked a stray eyelash off the side of my nose. “Guess Gemma shook this loose when she was powdering your nose. Wanna make a wish?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “World peace?” He still cupped my chin, staring down at me, so close he could probably see everything I was thinking.
“It doesn’t count if you say it out loud.”
I prayed to any deity within earshot that I wouldn’t ruin this and be forced to watch repeats of my failure on the seven o’clock news.
***
Kyle didn’t look nervous as he stood behind that podium. He didn’t look like anything, really. Calm but severe. No smile, steely eyes, one tapping finger on his right hand. A totally different person who looked like he’d never laughed a day in his life. You almost forgot that his blond hair made him look like he should have been in high school.
He took the microphone off its stand and waited until the murmuring died down. “My client’s sister Katya wanted to make a short statement to clear up the misinformation the Orange County police department has been releasing. She’ll open the floor to take questions for five minutes afterward, and any follow-up requests for interviews should be sent to my attention, Kyle Cavanaugh at the offices of Singer & Harrison.” He walked out from behind the podium and surrendered the microphone. Gemma’s wrinkled hand contracted on my knee cap. I felt like if she removed it, I’d fall apart. I needed to sap strength from someone. Maybe I’d become an emotional vampire. Caroline told me what those were once and laughed until she cried.
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