Cristina

by Jake Parent

  As soon as she handed the drums back, someone passed her a joint. She took the tube of smoking, white paper without thinking, barely even looking at it, but clearly smelling the skunky aroma drifting up into her face. Having always preferred booze and harder drugs, she’d never been a huge pothead, but she’d always loved the smell.

  For a moment, she imagined holding the crinkly paper to her lips, sipping smoke into her lungs, feeling her body float weightless like a balloon.

  The thought died when she noticed a man wearing a trench coat and dark glasses staring at her from across the circle. He wasn’t standing among the crowd, but just at the edge of where the fog became too thick to see past.

  He had a camera and it was pointed directly at her.

  When he saw her looking his way, he turned and took off speed-walking in the other direction. She could have sworn she knew him from somewhere.

  After passing the joint along to someone who would actually use it, she went to see if she could get another look at the guy.

  No luck. He’d slipped into the mist.

  Then she realized where she’d seen him.

  33

  The Venus Café was packed.

  Through the window, Cristina could see that all the tables were full. Several groups of people stood outside the front door, lining the wall along the cigarette-covered sidewalk. Everyone seemed patient, laughing and taking pictures with their phones.

  Jordan and Dan were there waiting when Cristina walked up.

  “Wow, what a difference a week makes, huh?” she said, trying to deflect attention away from her frustration.

  “Tourist season is just about full-blown now,” Jordan agreed, watching her. “The wait shouldn’t be long, though. You OK? You look rather flustered.”

  Dan hadn’t as much as glanced her way. He rubbed his bearded chin like he was contemplating some deep universal truth. He seemed a lot cleaner than the last time Cristina saw him, but she was pretty sure he still wasn’t wearing deodorant.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “Just some creeper taking pictures of me at the drum circle right now.”

  “Eww,” Jordan said. “Do you know him?”

  “No, but I think I saw him yesterday too, on the pier.”

  “Private detective,” Dan said out of nowhere, not breaking his thoughtful stare.

  “Huh?” Cristina asked.

  Dan dropped his hand from his chin and slowly turned toward her.

  “Private detective, I said.”

  “Yah, I heard you. I just don’t understand what you mean. What would a private detective be doing following me, of all people?”

  “I don’t know,” Dan said. He spoke fast and didn’t move his lips much when he did. Still, he was surprisingly articulate. “Back when I worked civil litigation cases, we always hired private dicks to follow around people when we were planning to sue them. Sometimes to find out specific things – like if they were having an affair with their secretary, or maybe any drug habits. Sometimes just to monitor them and build up a psychological profile, so we would know how to rattle them in court.”

  “Oh shit,” she said, putting it all together.

  “I assume you know who might have hired this guy?” Jordan asked, trying to sound sympathetic, but still coming off as condescending as ever.

  “Uh, yah,” Cristina said. Then she screamed, “FUCK!”

  Jordan jumped back. Most of the people standing outside the restaurant stopped what they were doing and cautiously stared. Everyone except Dan. He looked a bit like a child after discovering a fascinating insect.

  “Who?” he asked with a combination of curiosity and kindness.

  The last thing Cristina wanted to do was sit there and yap about her problems with two people she hardly knew, one of whom she didn’t know at all.

  But Dan’s eyes were warm. Behind the silly homeless act, Cristina could see something else. A sparkle of genuine empathy. The kind she’d only ever seen in people like Tío Alberto and Michelle. Those saints of the world who have dedicated their lives to helping others.

  “My ex,” she said. “It has to be him. And the guy likely got a picture of me holding a joint, too.”

  “What were you doing holding a joint?” Jordan asked with more accusation than Cristina was in the mood for.

  “It was nothing, alright?” she snapped, firing up a Lucky Strike. “Some dude at the drum circle put it in my hand. I didn’t hit it or anything. I passed it on to the person beside me. But Trenchcoat had a goddamn camera on me right at that moment.”

  “Well, what can he really do with it?” Jordan asked.

  Dan watched.

  Cristina said, “I have to go to court this Friday for a stupid custody hearing. My ex has an expensive lawyer and I have shit. He’s obviously trying to set me up to look like some horrible mother.” She felt a tingle in her eyes. “I’ve worked hella hard to get away from that life, and now he’s trying to make me look like I’ve fallen back so he can take my baby away from me. I even have to take a drug test.”

  “That’s good!” Dan declared.

  “Good?” Cristina asked, trying not to sniffle. “How can that possibly be good?”

  “Well, did you smoke the joint?”

  “I said I didn’t, OK?”

  “That’s what I thought I heard. So, like I said, that’s good. You’re going to do the drug test, and it will show that you haven’t smoked pot.”

  “I guess I didn’t think about it like that . . .”

  “That’s OK.” Dan’s face remained soft and patient. He glanced down at his clothes, running his hands through his beard. “Hey, I know I might not be dressed for the part at the moment, but I am a member of the California Bar. I’d be happy to represent you.”

  She looked at him skeptically. “Are you serious? I can’t really pay much.” That wasn’t totally true, of course. She did have some money. But after seeing what her divorce attorney had charged, if things got complicated at all, she knew that the relatively small bit of cash she’d stashed from the settlement would be burned up in no time.

  Maybe that’s what Anthony wants, she thought. Maybe he thinks he can bleed me dry until I have nothing left.

  “I’m serious as a heart attack,” Dan said. “Free of charge, too. Or, pro bono as we say in the legal world. It sounds more important that way. Actually, I think it would be fun.” There continued to be an almost spiritual empathy in his eyes, but now there was something else there, too. The look of a lawyer who smells blood. He continued, “If your ex has an expensive attorney, you’re going to want someone in your corner when you walk in there. I’m telling you . . . no, I’m begging you, because from what Jordan has said you sound like a great person, if you don’t want my help, then at least let me make a few calls and find you someone else.”

  It didn’t feel like she had much choice.

  “Alright, you’re hired.” She extended her hand and he took it.

  “Thanks!” he said, making it sound like she was the one doing him a favor. “You won’t regret it.”

  “Somehow I don’t think I will.”

  The hostess – a young woman with a fake green parakeet tied into her hair – stuck her head out the door and called Jordan’s name.

  As they made their way to the table, Dan put his arm on Cristina’s shoulder.

  “Let’s meet this week to talk,” he said seriously. “I really do think I can help, or I wouldn’t have offered. I hope you know that. I’m not kidding around here. I may not look like much, but I’ve got it where it counts.”

  34

  Cristina forgot to leave the porchlight on.

  With the dense fog, it was almost pitch black when she parked the Civic in front of the lawn.

  Her foot kicked a package on the doorstep as she fumbled the keys into the lock.

  Once inside, she turned on the hall light, trying not to look at the closet, but nonetheless finding her eyes locked onto the spot where three ominous words had been written
in pink lipstick. Well, at least part of her still thought they had been. Maybe.

  DON’T TRUST HIM.

  She willed her feet forward. But froze in front of the door, trying to understand what had happened, and if any of it had been real.

  Her hand twisted the knob and pulled.

  Still just a closet, now filled with cardboard boxes.

  She shook her head and closed the door.

  The package that had been left on the porch was small and circular, wrapped in nice-looking white paper without any postage.

  Must have been dropped off.

  Flipping open her knife, she carefully cut open one side of the paper. Inside was a box of chocolates. Not the cheap, mass-produced ones you get at the supermarket, either. These were high-end. The kind you spend twenty minutes picking out at a shop while chatting with a nice old-lady who works behind the counter.

  There was a small notecard attached.

  Hope you enjoy every bite as much as I enjoy you.

  There was no signature, but she knew it had to be from Casey.

  She smiled, her cheekbones buzzing with joy.

  The box was thick and heavy. She shimmied the top off and pulled the matted cover away, revealing twenty of the most beautiful chocolates she’d ever seen. There were dark-brown truffles rolled in cocoa-powder. Smooth, velvety ones with white pinstripes. Some with nuts sprinkled on the outside. And, in the middle, Cristina’s absolute all-time favorite: dark-chocolate-covered cherries.

  Delicately, between two fingers, she grabbed one of the cherries and bit into it. A bit of the oozing center dripped onto her chin. She wiped the dark-red liquid away with a finger and then licked it with her tongue, imagining for a moment that it was Casey.

  Oh, he’s going to get his. Guaranteed.

  She pulled out her phone and sent him a picture of her finger in her mouth, the edge of her bottom lip pulled ever-so-slightly open.

  Along with the picture, she wrote: This is going to be you the next time I see you.

  Her heart raced a little as she finished that first morsel of chocolatey goodness. It felt wonderful. She grabbed another and went to take a shower.

  ***

  Despite the long week, Cristina felt completely energized after slipping into her comfy clothes. She’d planned on just chilling and doing nothing, but instead decided to clean the kitchen. Then the living room. And then her room, too.

  Every so often, she grabbed another chocolate and felt a new surge of warm affection for Casey as she gobbled it down.

  It wasn’t until around 1 AM that he finally texted back.

  I think I can handle that action. Haha. You’re probably in bed. Wish I was there. Sweet dreams. XOXO

  She finished cleaning and was smoking cigarettes in her bed while drawing – something she hadn’t done much of since getting clean.

  Her sketch of the coastline was coming along nicely.

  Not bad for being out of practice for a year.

  It made her wonder why she’d ever stopped. Not that it had been a conscious decision. She just never seemed able to focus like she could on this particular evening. Her body didn’t even feel like it needed sleep. Which was nice. She really didn’t want to know where she would end up if she closed her eyes.

  35

  Cristina got her wish and didn’t have to discover what dreams were waiting for her. She didn’t sleep at all.

  Surprisingly, staying up all night didn’t make her feel all that bad. She still felt so full of energy when the sun started coming up, she skipped breakfast and walked down to the cliffs.

  Having zero desire to climb down the stairs to where the water had almost carried her away, she instead found a flat boulder to sit on. From there, she smoked cigarettes and gazed out over the ocean, watching the sunrise, listening to the rhythmic pounding of waves below. It kind of reminded her of the drum circle, the way the sound connected her to the rest of the universe.

  She thought about all the other people across the world who might be sitting on beaches at that very moment, hearing the same body of water crash against their particular piece of coast. The way it had since long before any of them were born, and as it would continue to do for long after they were all dead.

  Thinking that way made the whole world feel vibrant. Alive.

  Despite the challenges in front of her, Cristina promised herself she would do her best to meet them head-on.

  ***

  The next couple of days weren’t so bad. There were no nightmares. No crazy visions. Actually, Cristina hardly slept much at all until Wednesday, when she crashed for almost 12 hours straight.

  It had been the strangest thing, staying up two nights in a row. But being no stranger to insomnia, Cristina decided to make the most of it.

  So she spent much of those two days and nights going back over the case documents from her divorce. Reading them made her feel a lot better about what was going on. In her anxiety about it all, she’d almost forgotten just how supportive Judge Samantha Redding had been.

  Cristina’s lawyer was ecstatic when he’d discovered that a woman would preside over the case.

  “They tend to be about a thousand times more sympathetic,” he’d said.

  And sympathetic she was. Throughout the entire trial – though Cristina remembered it hadn’t actually been called that. During the proceeding, or hearing, or whatever it was, Judge Redding blasted Anthony again and again.

  For being an abuser, a liar, a cheater, and once even for dozing off.

  There was no sympathy at all for the fact his head was bandaged like an escaped mummy. At one point, she even called him, “a conniving rat bastard.” Anthony didn’t react. He only sat there with the same blank stare he carried with him the entire time they were in court. But even the seasoned Walden Chester III had been taken aback by the viciousness of the judge’s comments.

  Cristina’s own lawyer had been kind of an asshole – definitely in it only for the money – but he was also very good. Now, she found herself grateful to him for keeping such meticulous notes. She thought they would serve her well in this sham of a hearing coming up.

  So did Dan.

  “Call me Daniel in any legal setting,” he told her when he came by to go over everything. “Daniel Davidson.”

  “And you really went to Harvard?” Cristina asked, curiosity winning out over her feeling of being impolite.

  “Top of my class,” he told her without so much as a smile. “But it’s honestly not all it’s cracked up to be. I mean, there are some smart people there, don’t get me wrong. But there are a lot of jackasses, too. Rich kids who’re there for the wrong reasons, like making money or impressing their overbearing parents.”

  “Was that you?” she blurted out.

  “Yep,” he answered plainly. “But I’m my own man now, and I certainly hope to stay that way. I wouldn’t change a thing about my journey either. Not school. Not the drugs. It all made me who I am.”

  “Absolutely,” she agreed. “I just hope we can get this whole thing over with as quickly as possible.”

  He nodded and said, “I’m not a family attorney. I studied corporate law, like most of the other people in my class. But this stuff isn’t all that complicated when it comes down to it. I’ve gone over your documents, as well as some of the related case law around these sorts of decisions.” He was getting more excited as he went on. “We won’t know exactly what Anthony’s claiming, as far as his rights to custody or that kind of thing, until Friday. But from what we do know, it seems obvious he’s trying to make the case that you’ve relapsed. So that makes our biggest asset the fact you’re not actively using any longer, which the drug test will show. Secondly, we have these case files, which clearly indicate a strong pattern of abuse on his part, as well as the previous Judge’s very, um, clear feelings about him.”

  Dan sounded like he not only knew his stuff, but that he was taking her situation seriously. And he’d obviously been doing his homework.

  Before
leaving, he told her to dress conservatively, and to answer every question the judge asked her with absolute honesty.

  36

  According to the list that came with the summons, there were several drug testing places in Pleasure Point. Cristina called one of them and was told to come in any time. No appointment necessary.

  When she showed up, she discovered the testing center was really no more than a small office in an out-of-the-way strip mall on the edge of town.

  Walking inside was a lot different experience than getting tested after being released from The Camp when she was a teenager. Back then, Cristina had to check in with a probation officer, which required going through a metal detector, getting searched, and almost always being given an “additional pat down for security” by some greedy-eyed male guard. There never failed to be a great amount of concern for what she might smuggle into the building between, around, and under her sizable young breasts.

  As far as she could tell, the strip mall place had only two employees. One man and one woman, both of whom wore blue hospital scrubs and sat behind a counter looking bored to death.

  The woman walked Cristina back to a small bathroom with a doorless stall. She handed over a cup and watched Cristina pee into it. She also took a hair sample. Then made Cristina sign documents verifying, under penalty of perjury, that she was, in fact, Cristina Rodriguez. That she was female. Her address was correct. And so on and so forth. All pretty standard stuff. The whole thing was over and done in about twenty minutes.

  Cristina got out of there as fast as her feet would carry her.

  On the way home, she stopped at a coffee shop. Besides having a bit of a tired, achy body, she was feeling pretty good about things. There were a lot of unknowns about the case, but at least she no longer felt totally alone. She had her secret weapon. The most unusual attorney she’d ever met: Mr. Danny Dee.

  Sitting outside, drinking black coffee and smoking, a hoodie covering her head in the foggy afternoon, Cristina felt her phone buzz in her pocket.