Be the One

by April Smith

  He showed her the unfinished spaces that would become private suites and took her before a sweeping unguarded opening which was to be the multistory windows of an exclusive club: humidors for your cigars, a cellar for your wine.

  Joe was in a delirium of optimism. High above factories and parking lots and private homes, everything was possible: Big impact. New skyline. Disney concert hall. Hire people from the inner city. He waved at where the hotel would eventually go and turned and kissed her with such passion that she laughed, then pressed her up against a pillar with his fingers between her legs and they might have done it standing if a worker hadn’t scuffled by with a screaming vacuum that was sucking up a stream of water as he carelessly pulled along an electric cord.

  Back in the Bentley, Joe sorted through two dozen invitations—screenings, benefits, gallery openings, dinner parties.

  “This is my life,” he mused. “Keeping everyone happy.”

  They made two quick stops—a reception for a Republican senator in an Italianate villa behind the Chateau Marmont and a fortieth-birthday party for the wife of one of Joe’s partners at the Four Seasons. The downtown crowd filled both, a cold crowd, Cassidy was discovering, where the women wore the same smart no-risk black dresses she had seen at Harvey Weissman’s and turned away after a limp sentence or two; the men refused to meet her eyes, no smiles, no flirtation. Joe had seemed perfectly content to keep introducing her over and over to the same icy indifference, and she just kept on drinking chardonnay.

  “We’re running late.”

  He checked his watch for the millionth time, agitated, as they waited for the third or fourth parking valet of the night.

  “Nora will be beside herself.”

  Cassidy hadn’t realized Nora was part of their mandate to keep everyone happy, but in any case, they had failed.

  It was past eight when they pulled up to a hacienda on North Doheny Drive. Joe had gotten out and gone thoughtlessly ahead, so by the time Cassidy walked through the curved doorway, he and his daughter were already in the foyer, arguing.

  “Sorry we’re late, go and change,” he was saying.

  “I’m not going. I have to look at the language in a tax proposal.”

  “Fine,” said Joe. “Send me an e-mail.”

  He took her hand. She pulled away, twitchy and quick.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m not being—I never even got dressed!” she said irritably.

  In the low-ceilinged stucco room with tiled fireplace and wrought-iron candelabrum Cassidy felt acutely claustrophobic and wanted to flee, as if the evening’s elegant express had taken a wrong turn and ended up in a 1940s horror movie.

  “I’m not dressed, either,” offered Cassidy, still in her work khakis.

  “Oh,” said Nora, “look at that body. You always look fabulous.”

  She had started to pace.

  “Got your faxes,” Cassidy said. “About the Colorado Silver Bullets.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “That’s a lot of information to research.”

  “It’s what I do at four in the morning, when I can’t sleep.”

  Joe had been staring at Nora’s feet. “You got dressed as far as your shoes,” he observed.

  Nora stopped and gazed down at the spike-heeled gold silk sandals with rhinestone buttons, incongruous with her size four jeans, as if she were surprised to find herself wearing them.

  “What do you think?” she asked, suddenly coy.

  “ ‘Fuck me’ shoes.”

  “Excuse me, Dad, but this is the nineties. Now they’re called ‘Fuck you’ shoes.”

  They both laughed—a laugh so minimalist, so knowing, so dry, so hip, it scarcely existed beyond a few screw-nosed sniffs. Then, like a vapor, it was gone.

  “I thought this event was important to you,” Joe was going on with an unpleasant edge. “You at least could have called me in the car. Cassidy and I could have made other plans.”

  Cassidy flinched.

  “Was this the fancy dinner?” she asked, still trying to help out. Trying to target the reasonable part of Nora, which kept whirling past them in a blur, like a child on a schoolyard merry-go-round.

  “It’s a fund-raiser for Children’s Hospital,” Joe answered, “on Santa Monica Pier. My daughter’s on the board. She’s worked very hard. I don’t get it,” he said, arms akimbo and thumbs hooked on his belt, clearly exasperated. “Come. Be with us. I want you to go.”

  “No.”

  “Well it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense for us to be there without you—”

  Cassidy wished he would lighten up. He looked a lot older in the creepy yellow light.

  Nora raised her eyes. In the gloom the blacks were huge. “The trouble with my father,” she began tremblingly, “is he has to control everybody’s life, and if—”

  “It was inconsiderate and rude!” Joe shouted as Sophie, Nora’s five-year-old, ran down the staircase squealing, throwing herself into his arms. She was wearing a flowered nightgown over heart pajamas, three different necklaces of pearls and beads and a sparkling tiara. Tucked beneath one arm was a large stuffed duck.

  “Ready for bed?” asked Joe.

  Sophie inclined her tiny nostrils like a butterfly sensing the wind and judged the currents in the room precisely.

  “I want HER to put me to sleep!” pointing emphatically at Cassidy, whom she could not possibly have remembered from a five-minute encounter they’d had on the beach at the Gran Caribe.

  But Cassidy felt as if she’d won the lottery as the child flew across the Mexican pavers on bare feet, wrapping her arms around Cassidy’s waist. Without thinking she had picked her up (all forty fragile pounds) and held her close, a perfect fit, whispering stupid things into her soft rosemary-scented hair like, “Want to come home with me?” and Sophie nodding obediently.

  Now the black Atlantic surf breaks vigorously across the spotlit jetty as Cassidy remembers the feeling of being bereft when the English nanny came and took the child away, Nora giving orders with arms crossed tight, all twisted up like her wrought-iron candlesticks—how could she not want to hold her own daughter? And hold her. And hold her.

  They left Nora alone in the foyer and drove pretty much in silence to the Santa Monica Pier. But when they had gotten out of the car Joe looked tired. “We don’t have to do this,” he said.

  Cassidy did not reply. They walked to the edge of Palisade Park, a high bluff overlooking the ocean. Excruciatingly bright crime lights jaundiced their skin, made the park look flat and ominous.

  They watched the kaleidoscoping lights of the Ferris wheel on the Pleasure Pier, as it used to be called. A huge green-striped tent had been pitched in the parking lot for Nora’s event, squatting on a layer of hot white light like a flying saucer.

  “They’ll raise a quarter of a million dollars for the hospital tonight.”

  “And Nora doesn’t want to be here?”

  “I don’t know. Probably angry at me for some reason.”

  “Or me.”

  “Nah. Why should she be?”

  “She’s incredibly possessive of you, Joe.”

  “It isn’t you,” Joe said. “It’s complicated.” He sighed. “Her mother is an alcoholic. She lives in New York. Nora inherited a whopping problem with addiction. Her teenage years were a series of freak-outs. Sometimes I think we’re still in them,” he added ruefully.

  “How old was she when you got divorced?”

  “Fourteen. And defiant?” He shook his head. “She was doing things … I’ll never understand. Totally out of my experience.”

  “To get drugs?”

  “They’re born, they’re beautiful, then they tear out your heart and put it through a meat grinder.”

  “Well,” said Cassidy lightly, “I wouldn’t know.”

  “There comes a point, like tonight, when all of a sudden you have no idea who they are.”

  He stared at the ocean, genuinely at a loss.


  She took his arm. “I’m sorry.”

  He seemed surprised by the sentiment and pulled her close.

  “I’m so fortunate.” He kissed Cassidy’s cheek. Then, “God was looking out for my girl. She got herself into a program and she’s been clean and sober seven years and seven months.”

  Cassidy hesitated. “You’re sure?”

  “Of this, I am sure.” Joe put a warm hand over Cassidy’s. “When she was pregnant, she finally came back. She’d been on the street, she was sick and scared and wanted to come home. I took her to our church, St. Sophia’s, and made her get down on her knees and swear. She had to stop the crap, then and there, for the sake of the baby. She no longer had the option to destroy herself. She got her head on straight, went back to school, with the kid … She’s not a stupid girl. She knows if she blows it, the car, the house in Beverly Hills, the full-time nanny—they’re history. She’s off drugs,” he said, drawing up, “I’m sure.”

  “She was lucky. Sophie is gorgeous.”

  “Sophie is my angel.”

  “Is there a father in the picture?”

  Shortly, “No.”

  The Pier was throwing off a pearl-pink glow of Victorian excitement, suggestive thrills to be had in the speed of modern machinery or in the gaming parlor, twirling rides and lose-your-shirt arcades, still drawing lovers from deep in the city to come out to the ocean and take a chance.

  Joe could build his monuments, and stand on top of the world. His daughter could adorn her feet with gold. But Cassidy had known, of all the treasures she had been shown that night, Sophie was the only one worth having.

  Now her skin is tacky from salt and cold, shoulders tight, as she turns from the Atlantic and passes through the birthday guests lingering beneath the lit canopy of the Coast Grill. The parking lot is still half-full. She walks between the Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles, in and out of pools of darkness, to the rental car at the far end.

  She has unlocked the door and the keys are still in her hand when a black man—lithe, youngish—rolls out from under the car, slashing with a knife, aiming low. She jumps back, the keys fly, the door pulls open, a momentary shield against the attacker. She slams it forward against his oncoming forehead but rebounds against another man waiting right behind her who pins her arms. She bellows with rage and stomps his toes with her heel—“Hey!” someone shouts, “Hey, you!” At the reflexive release of his fingers she gives him the elbows, hard, he lets go but then it’s two on one, dragging her over the concrete and holding her down. She resists with all her arm strength but one of the men is able to grip her wrist, pressing so tightly the blood vessels burst, and push her clawing fingers into open space, while the other quickly and efficiently slams the car door on her hand.

  16

  Cassidy becomes aware of lying on a gurney. Under two blankets. Inside a circle of closed white curtains.

  A male voice says, “Knock, knock.”

  The curtains fuss and pull apart and a short man wearing a jacket and tie comes through.

  “Cassidy Sanderson? I’m Sergeant Nathan Allen, Detective Division, Vero Beach Police Department. Mind if I talk to you?”

  Her throat is dry.

  He perches on a stool, stubby hands loose in his lap.

  “I’m the detective on call. The road officer asked me to respond because of the incident that took place outside the Coast Grill this evening. Could you please tell me what happened?”

  For no particular reason she seems engaged by the polka dots on his tie.

  “Feeling no pain, are we?”

  In fact the Demerol is making everything smooth and beige and sweet as a coffee ice cream shake.

  “Okay.” He appraises her. “But I’ll need to talk to you after you’re discharged. We need a statement while your memory is fresh.”

  With effort she brings up a shoulder and wipes her lips on the hospital gown, leaving reddish drool. “I was jumped.”

  “I know,” he says, interested. “You sustained what is called ‘great bodily harm.’ ”

  “So did they.”

  The detective sits back and the stool creaks.

  “So we should be looking for a couple of crippled black guys?”

  Her answer becomes a slow-motion fall over a cliff.

  She is wearing her own dress again. After the hospital gown the satin lining feels sumptuous, caressing her hurting body as she walks slowly but unassisted out of the ER.

  “It’s not that bad,” she says of her left hand, elevated in a sling inside a hot pink cast (what was she thinking?). “There was a time in my life when I got into a lot of accidents. In six months I totaled the car four times.”

  “Drinking?”

  “Being crazy, being a kid.”

  “God watches out for children, huh?”

  “Most of the time.”

  Detective Allen steps along patiently at her side.

  “I once went through a plate glass window. Dislocated an elbow during a game,” shamelessly boastful, even now.

  “What kind of game?”

  “Professional women’s baseball.”

  “The Colorado Silver Bullets?”

  “Right.”

  “You play?”

  “Used to.”

  “Why not anymore?”

  She smiles. “I’m old.”

  “No way. You’ve got good years left. I can see ’em.”

  “Sometimes the price for continuing is just too high, know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yes,” he says. “My marriage.”

  He holds the door. A restless wet tropical breeze assails them and Cassidy begins to shiver in the sleeveless dress. By the time she slides into the front seat of the unmarked tan Ford her teeth are chattering. Detective Allen reaches into the rear, picks up a blue nylon windbreaker with POLICE in block letters on the back, and drapes it over her shoulders.

  A Christmas tree–shaped air freshener dangles from the mirror but the interior still smells dusky and male, and she has a stoned sense of being on a high school date with a nice guy from the tennis squad—smart (he’ll become an ophthalmologist), but likes her too much, is too short, driving his mother’s car.

  In eleven minutes they are at the Vero Beach Central police station, a spiffy blue and white building barely seven years old, with a clean lobby that has a gumball machine and lots of notices about community this and that. Detective Allen waves to a desk sergeant behind a wall of dark glass and punches a code into a box next to a steel door. They enter a corridor and then Cassidy finds herself in a tiny soundproofed room.

  “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “Please.”

  “Latte?”

  The door seals shut before she can answer. Cassidy isn’t sure whether Detective Allen is joking or not, but suddenly none of it seems very funny.

  The room contains a table and two chairs, one straight-backed, the other, unaccountably, a Barcalounger. There is no space for anything else. She looks at her reflection in the smoke of an obvious two-way mirror and a thousand movie clichés clutter her mind. One cheek is swollen, contusions on the neck and forehead, hair a mess, clutching the windbreaker over bare shoulders like some kind of strung-out prostitute they dragged in on a raid.

  Stop. That’s the way they want you to think.

  It is hot in the interrogation room and already Cassidy has begun to sweat. She throws off the windbreaker, finds a hairy old elastic band in the pocket of her backpack, and pulls up a neat ponytail. Then, of all things, lip gloss. Funny what you fall back on.

  Detective Allen returns with two black coffees and a slew of artificial creamer packets.

  “Starbucks, we ain’t.” Nicely.

  “No problem.”

  Cassidy stirs the noxious powder as cheerfully as if it were 9 a.m. and not three in the morning, time to take another Vicodin from the hospital pharmacy.

  Although her hand is already throbbing she intends to put off that next pill as long as possible. She cannot allow her sele
ctive attention to be compromised. She has to stay focused on what she is going to say.

  There is a slogan lettered above the door in a funky old women’s locker room at UCLA:

  Pain is temporary but Bruin pride is forever.

  Pain is temporary.

  Forever is a long time.

  Passion, where is that?

  Detective Allen is fighting with the Barcalounger. Something is preventing the back from straightening up—turns out to be a Barbie doll stuck in the seat. He fishes it out, tosses it into a box full of toys.

  “When we have to interview a child victim,” he explains, settling in.

  Cassidy says, “Oh, shit.”

  Detective Allen has a watchful, not unattractive face with a hip brush haircut that stands straight up like two inches of new lawn. Cassidy’s age, lifts weights, needs to work on his abs. Palomino coloring, intelligent pale blue eyes, gold on blond, likes the sun, she figures, when he doesn’t have to work nights. He rubs his hands on his knees in a self-conscious way but does not appear to be the least bit tired or distracted. Rather he seems enormously enthusiastic, like the tie with dancing polka dots and the white shirt with wide navy blue stripes, echoes of Carnaby Street. Cassidy can smell the starch.

  They go through the standard questions. Place of birth. Residence. Employer.

  “You’re a scout for the Dodgers?”

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  “Cool.”

  “Usually.”

  “Why? The male-female thing? Please. That’s old. We’ve had women officers on the force twenty years.”

  Cassidy shrugs. Sighs. Watch out. Don’t feel too comfortable.

  “Would it excite you to know that I own a Ralph Branca baseball card? He was the pitcher who—”

  “Bobby Thomson hit the home run off when the Dodgers lost the 1951 pennant. Why Branca?”

  “I don’t know. I think I was using him as a bookmark. Somehow my ex-wife missed it when she threw out my baseball card collection.”

  Cassidy giggles. “Sorry. Not funny.”

  “Are we ready to get into this?”

  She nods.

  Good-naturedly, “So. Who were those guys?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You’ve never seen them before?”