Nicholas’s marble eyes followed the sparkly circles the earring spun in midair until he couldn’t take it any longer and lunged forward to bat it with his paw. I let him slap it away, hoping Kyle wouldn’t notice it in the general disarray of his apartment and accidentally step on it with bare feet, but thought better of it when Nicholas made a mad dash off the couch to retrieve it, sparkle lust shining in his eyes.
***
I didn’t ask how it went with Caroline when I opened the door for Kyle that evening, and he didn’t volunteer any information, shrugging out of his jacket as I locked the deadbolt behind him.
“Did you check the cameras when you got in?”
“Yeah. Nothing.”
“Maybe he’s gone for good, then.”
I snorted loudly, rolling my eyes. “Or she.”
A tiny wrinkle threaded between his brows. “What?”
“Or she.”
“No, I heard you fine.” The wrinkle deepened as his eyebrows rose higher. “I just don’t know what you mean by it. Seemed like male footprints to me. Not that I’m a professional footprint examiner.”
“Tons of women out there have big feet. Paris Hilton has big feet. Your girlfriend had some huge feet, too. Those ugly leopard heels couldn’t hide them.”
“Oh, come on.” He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “You can’t be serious.”
I shrugged, looking away. “She sure as hell doesn’t like me very much. Caroline thinks it could be her, too.”
“Oh, well if Caroline says so.” His nostrils flared, his words drenched in sarcasm. “Crystal may not like you, but she’s also blissfully unaware of that which does not solely revolve around her. She wouldn’t go skulking around your condo. She doesn’t even know where you live.”
“She could figure it out, if she really wanted to,” I said, but even I didn’t believe it myself.
“Fine. Keep an eye on the cameras, then, we’ll see if it’s her.”
“She’d give herself away since she apparently can’t go anywhere without littering earrings. One stabbed me in the thigh when I sat on your couch.”
“And you know it was hers how?”
“Are you admitting to being a man whore right now? Is that what you’re doing?” Though I knew he was just being a lawyer, playing a game of Clue. Who what when where why. Do you have evidence? An eyewitness? A single earring is proof of nothing, entirely circumstantial; it could have found its way between couch cushions by any number of reasons. Next witness. “It had Crystal written all over it, looked like it was coated in chlamydia.”
“Can we move this conversation back to a planet I recognize? Karen Stone’s people are going to show up any minute.” He exhaled a long, slow breath. “Aren’t you going to ask how the taping went?”
I didn’t need to ask. Maybe it was her first time in front of a camera, but Caroline had been acting her entire life. I was positive she’d exuded the perfect amount of melancholy and bewilderment. Who, me?
She wouldn’t have stumbled over her words; every consonant would be enunciated, precise as a knife slinger, clear and crisp, prominent t’s, no umms or long pauses. How did the taping go? What was I, new here? She was a liar of the most impressive caliber.
“I’m sure it went splendidly,” was all I ended up saying.
“Karen loved her. The sound guys loved her. I’m sure the camera man had a hard time keeping the equipment from shaking.” He shrugged, impressed in a grudging sort of way, but uninterested. I wondered if that same reaction would happen if every other man on earth peeled back Caroline’s skin and looked at all that shiny steel beneath. Would they still salivate over her, or would they feel the way Kyle did, appreciative of her acting skills, but keep a wide berth all the same?
But men were men. It didn’t take much, a pretty face would probably suffice, and those like Kyle were likely few and far between. Wasn’t there a reason for all those irresistible femme fatales in James Bond movies? She’d still have her admirers. At this point I was mainly just surprised she hadn’t gotten fan mail, horrible sonnets she’d read aloud in her rubber room, pressing them to her chest as she laughed.
“They filmed for over three hours. Karen asked about your mom, your dad. Growing up with an alcoholic.”
“I’m sure that made for some interesting stories. How to keep a drunk from choking on his own vomit in his sleep. Helping a lush with a bum leg up the stairs.” But Caroline wouldn’t have done either, she’d have watched it happen and hoped he hurt the way she had. I couldn’t blame her.
Kyle cracked his neck, interlaced his fingers over his head, locking into a deep stretch. He swallowed a yawn. “The makeup people will need to get at you. Ready for more bronzer? What’s the stuff they put around your eyes, not mascara, that other black stuff in a tube?”
“Liquid eyeliner.” Sure, I was ready for it. Why not. I didn’t think I cared too much what they did to me now. When you lie for so long, you start forgetting what it costs you.
***
Some brown eyes are dull, but Caroline’s sparkled. I’d always noticed that about her. Lights could set them on fire, make them sunny yellow, and anger could turn them flat, shut you out like a slamming steel door.
The woman who’d done Caroline’s makeup was probably fielding congratulations about now, but I knew she had nothing to do with it. Caroline was beautiful when she rolled out of bed in the morning with nasty breath, messy hair, and a ripped T-shirt on, beautiful even when she cried, which didn’t happen often, but still, it was impressive. Not many people could look beautiful with their eyelashes glued into wet triangles, tears trembling at the edges as they choked back snot.
The only time I remembered seeing her cry was after our father died, and not because of that, because someone from social services had told her I wouldn’t automatically be turned over to her custody, no matter the fact she was legally an adult. That wasn’t the way the system worked, she’d have to go to court, prove her case. It had scared me, seeing her cry like that, her back pressed against the ugly wallpaper in our old apartment. She had both arms snared around her stomach as though some freak accident had disemboweled her and she was trying to stuff the innards back where they belonged.
I knew she’d still look amazing in those ugly scrubs, flawless in her imprisonment, big who, me? eyes shining. But I’d grown up with her, had a tolerance for her beauty; it was one of those things you sort of got used to after a while, the way it works when you have a funny-looking friend. After a while, you grew accustomed. After a while, they looked like everyone else.
She didn’t smile when she spoke to Karen, not unless she was talking about me. Kyle didn’t miss that either. When I pointed it out, he nodded, chewing on a Reuben, and said, “Yep. She’s good.”
She’d written a new script, my sister, but they were her same lies. That was one thing you could always count on; Caroline would never deviate from her story.
Nicholas turned onto his back, baring his belly for scratches. The glitter of his eyes reminded me of another glittery object I’d found in this very same spot the last time I’d been to Kyle’s apartment.
I wanted to torch his couch, suddenly. Caroline would be proud. Let it burn. Fire’s not so scary, sweetheart.
How could he invite me to sit here like it was nothing, like he hadn’t kissed me and splayed some woman out on it a second later?
“I don’t think I want to watch the interview with me,” I said, running a nail over Nicholas’s furry stomach. “I remember what I said. They wouldn’t have edited it to make me look bad.”
He gave me a sidelong look, gaze running from my eyes to the cat purring helplessly on my lap. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to.” He knocked back a slug of beer and wiped off the foam mustache with the back of his hand. “Something wrong?”
Yeah, I wanted to snap. Yeah, a shit ton of things. My murdering sister slash best friend was locked up, a stalker had rendered me unable to protect my cat, I had a gun in my purs
e which was probably illegal, and oh yeah, here I am on a couch that you’ve probably christened with some woman who wore too much makeup and was so snotty she ought to be fined.
And I was so annoyed with him for not knowing with sudden, chill clarity what was wrong, how it hadn’t fallen out of the sky like an anvil and bonked him on the head. How dense are you? Didn’t you go to law school, dazzle your firm’s partners with your brilliance?
I wanted him to read my mind so I didn’t have to spell it all out, I wanted to smack that confusion off his face, tear it into a million little pieces and throw it into the air like confetti.
Something wrong? Yes, everything.
He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it lightly, and though I knew I was being ridiculous, it made me so mad, red patterns and constellations bloomed behind my clenched eyelids. I shook his hand off.
He let it hang in the air for a moment before he reached over to press pause on the TV remote. “I have a feeling you’re going to think this is a stupid question, but are you mad at me for some reason?”
“I just think it would be awesome if you kept your hands to yourself.”
“It was supposed to be comforting, not lecherous.”
Lecherous, how many SAT points did that one net? “So do you consider it lecherous to go around kissing random girls when you have a girlfriend?”
I wasn’t looking at him, but out of the corner of my eye I saw him stab the space between his brows with a finger. “You’re not exactly a random girl, and I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Oh sure. It was the cleaning lady’s earring. Or hell, someone broke in and instead of stealing shit, left you an earring. Somebody call Karen Stone, we’ve got another mystery to solve.”
“So, just to be clear, you’re mad about an earring?”
“I’m mad that you kissed me and then acted like it was some huge joke. Fucking LOL, right? Hilarious. You should do stand-up.”
He fell back against the couch cushions, slowly swilling his beer. “It wasn’t a joke. It was funny, but not a joke.”
“That makes no sense at all.”
He blew out a sigh. “I meant it when I said I haven’t been as professional with you as I should be. I am only human. I shouldn’t have done it, but I wanted to, so I did it anyway.” He shook his head in that odd way he had, as if ridding himself of persistent cartoon birds. “If I knew you’d wind up getting this upset over it, I’d have shown more restraint.”
What the hell did he know about restraint, this guy who drank on the job and lied for a living. I sincerely doubted he knew the first thing about restraint, what it entailed.
“I don’t know why you’d want to at all.”
“You’re not very good at playing dumb, you know.”
I bet Crystal was. I bet she didn’t know the first thing about him, probably never asked about his parents, how they’d died. It took him two times to pass his driver’s test over in Pomona.
“You know perfectly well I have an ill-fated crush on you.”
He was very particular about his toothpaste, too, never the gel kind, he felt like he was brushing with slimy hair products.
“A crush? What are you, twelve?” I kneaded Nicholas’s back, taking care not to exert too much pressure. I had a feeling I could crumble a diamond to dust at the moment.
“I wish you’d stop covering your shyness with pithy phrases, you know. You’re not fooling anyone.”
Maybe I was trying to fool myself. Well why not, I’d done it before.
For some insane reason, he didn’t like black mulch. It’s like it’s pretending to be potting soil and it bugs the hell out of me. I’d been surprised anybody could have such strong feelings about mulch at all. If we were walking anywhere, any time he saw trash on the ground something compelled him to pick it up, carry it around until he saw a garbage can. I had no clue why he didn’t apply that same logic to his own apartment. He never cared about a mess at home.
“Does Crystal know about the mulch?” I heard myself ask.
“Excuse me?”
“The mulch. You hate black mulch.”
A line of amused irony stamped itself around one corner of his mouth. “No, I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it to her. I haven’t seen her in months.” He tucked a curtain of my hair behind my ears. I let him even though I hated having my hair like that, it made me look like an elf. “Are we okay?”
I didn’t know how to answer that one. We had all our limbs and no yawning wounds. Was he okay? I wasn’t, but I hadn’t been for so long it was old news, a ton of waterlogged and wavy TV Guides piled in a corner of a garage.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
He leaned over to grab the remote, thought better of it, and turned back to me. “Still don’t want to watch your interview?”
Suddenly I was very tired, too tired to make any decisions, no matter their importance. “I don’t know what I want.”
“We could make out instead.”
“Go to hell,” I said, but I couldn’t muster enough gusto to really embody the feel of the phrase, it only made him laugh.
He pressed play, settling back into the cushions with his beer.
“It’s been a few months since we last spoke, Kat,” Karen Stone said, prim as ever in her off-white cardigan. “How have you been?”
“About as good as I can be, given the situation. The support Caroline’s been getting online has been overwhelming, we appreciate it so much. It’s hard to believe we’d get this much support at all, given the charges, how the prosecutors have vilified both me and my sister.”
“I imagine it’s been a humbling experience. I understand your recent ‘fame’ for lack of a better word, has brought about a few new concerns for you.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Would you be willing to tell us about it?”
TV Kat pressed her mauve lips together, looked at her hands for a moment before back up at Karen. “I’m hesitant to call it anything more than a few incidents, since the police seem to think it’s all been teenagers pulling pranks. It started with my cat going missing. Someone had put the collar I made him in an envelope, shoved it in the doorjamb. He turned up later, thank God, but with a different collar, one someone had gone out and bought, engraved it with my address. After that, someone started messing with the power in my place one night. Turning the lights on and off over and over, playing with the main breaker switch. Whoever it was ran when I went outside to confront them. The police couldn’t do much. I guess I can’t blame them, it’s hardly enough proof of a legitimate stalker, but it’s been scary all the same.”
“I can imagine,” Karen said, eyes wide with what could have been real or phony concern. “As if you haven’t gone through enough.”
One in six women and one in nineteen men have experienced stalking in their lifetime, Karen’s voiceover proclaimed as charts and stock photos fell onto the screen. Persons eighteen to twenty-four experience the highest rate of stalking in the United States, and college women are the highest group targeted. Eighty percent of campus stalking victims know their stalker, and the average duration of stalking is a little under two years.
“Jeez,” I said, over the TV Kat’s response. “Wonder how many stalkers Caroline’s had in her life? My last count brought the total to like, one hundred and twelve. But she wasn’t afraid of any of them. She’s not afraid of anything, though.”
“That fearlessness is to her detriment.” Kyle aimed the remote, fast-forwarding through the commercial break. “If you’re not afraid of anything, consequences mean little. You wind up doing stupid things, hurting yourself, hurting other people. Getting into bad situations. There’s a damn good reason for all those little hairs on the back of your neck.”
MAY
I’d learned through movies and watching Caroline that receiving a we need to talk message of any kind meant nothing good. Every time Caroline had said as much, it had been because she intended to break up with some poor schmuck who had no idea what w
as about to hit him.
We weren’t in a relationship, but waking up to that text from Kyle still made my blood run cold.
***
Gemma delivered me to Kyle at half past nine that morning, but the only greeting I received was a flickering bout of eye contact and a customary chin jut of recognition as he spoke into his office line.
“Why don’t you just sit down, honey.” Gemma squeezed my shoulder with her soft, wrinkled hand. “He should be done with the call soon.”
He glanced at me again upon his secretary’s exit, and the next round of eye contact was longer, probing, and he’d added a small smile that could have meant any number of things.
“Well?” I turned one hand palm-up when he hung up the phone. “What do we need to talk about?”
“Good morning to you, too. I have some news.”
“Good news or bad news?”
“Depends on how you look at it.”
“Well, you know me, I’m a glass half-full type chick.”
“I got a call from the DA this morning. They wanted to offer your sister a plea bargain.”
I waited for the punch line to no avail, blinking stupidly. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
“Is it a good deal?”
“Voluntary manslaughter. She’d do three to six. Maybe a year and a half with good behavior.”
I stifled a groan. Caroline’s behavior could rarely be classed as good. “In jail, or at Breakthrough?”
“Those details haven’t been hammered out. I didn’t even tell Caroline yet. It’s a good deal. Proves all the media coverage has shaken their faith in their own case. I don’t think it’s likely they’ll offer better than that.”
“Is this what we needed to talk about?”
“Is it not big enough news? Is there something else we need to discuss?” He waited for an answer I wouldn’t give him, leaning back in his creaky swivel chair. “I’m going to set up a meeting with Caroline to go over all this. On the fairly good chance she refuses the deal, I want you to talk to her. Make her see sense. A trial isn’t just a fun distraction for her, and it could go badly, we’ve got no way of predicting the outcome.”
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