Not to mention, it seems somewhat beside the point given what you would think any reasonable lawyer would have to see as the main event of the Gabby Gardiner Crime Spree and Amnesia Fest: the car.
“What about the car?” I say.
“Well, insurance should take care of that,” Mr. Healy says, not even looking up. “And you won’t be driving for a while, of course.”
Excuse me?
“Because I took the car?”
“Because you drove it drunk into a tree,” he sighs. “Okay, let me explain this to you again.”
“Wait! My boyfriend . . . my former boyfriend is like Mr. DUI and he’s still driving,” I say. The thought of being stranded in that house on Estrada with Vivian and John and no possible means of escape is somewhat horrifying. “When can I drive?”
Mr. Healy hems and haws and makes a lawyer joke about how my former boyfriend’s lawyer must have something on the DA hardy har har. “And even if the blood alcohol is out as evidence,” he says, “then we’ve still got some pretty reckless driving on our hands.”
He seems determined to completely avoid the thing with me stealing the car, which seems like it could be a serious crime.
“The car?” I say again.
He just sits there in the squeaky chair looking concerned but clueless.
“Uh . . . stealing the car . . .”
“You stole a car!” Mr. Healy says, trying to sound calm as his chair squeaks back to its full upright position.
“There’s no way Billy would have given me the keys to that car. That car is his baby. I mean, it was his baby. Before I wrecked it. So it seems like I must have just, I don’t know, sort of taken it. Won’t the police figure that out?”
Mr. Healy is suddenly taking a lot of notes. “And, uh, what does Billy say?”
“Pretty much nothing. He pretty much says not to worry about it, and his mom pretty much says the same thing.”
“This would be Agnes Nash who says not to worry about it?”
“Uh-huh.”
At which point, Mr. Healy puts down his yellow legal pad and smiles at me.
“Okay, then,” he says, settling back down into the chair which squeaks an even more hideous protest. “You just might not have anything to worry about on that aspect of it. The police and the prosecutor haven’t brought it up, and I don’t think we’ll be bringing it up either, eh?” Hardy har har.
So if nobody says anything about the car, we can all join hands and have group amnesia together?
Like if no one says it happened, then it didn’t happen?
As if Billy had said: Here, drunken girl, take my stunning and incredibly expensive car and wrap it around a tree. Or maybe he was so drunk he just tossed me the keys, but who is going to go there? I’d still be the drunk girl who drove into the tree, and he’d be in a worse ring of Probation hell.
“Right,” says Mr. Healy. “I think our focus here needs to be helping you get past the Drinking Problem so everyone can see that you Take Responsibility and it isn’t going to happen again. I need you to be a model girl. I need you doing everything you’re supposed to do, everything all the mental health and rehab people you’re about to meet tell you to do, on time, and with a smile on your face. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, I can do anything.”
“Anything legal,” he says. “Anything legal, moral, and looks good in a probation report. What about school? Do you have a disciplinary record at school I need to know about?”
“No, nothing,” I say, trying to figure out quickly how to let him know what a paragon of perfection I could look like on paper if desperate enough. “I’m on Student Council!” I blurt.
Mr. Healy does not look all that impressed. “They never caught you so much as smoking a cigarette behind the gym?” he says. “You’re not one of the usual suspects, notorious bad girl, sketchy friends, the works?”
“No!”
“Because if we need to send you to another school, I’ve got one up my sleeve, and we can slip you right in. Fresh start and all that.”
“I don’t want a fresh start!” I say. “The only thing I could be notorious for is this, and it’s not something I do a lot of.”
“No drunk and disorderlies are going to pop up in Orange County with some Jane Doe-linsky ID? And by the way, if you have a Jane Doe-linsky ID, I need you to melt it down. Today.”
“I don’t. But if I did, I would. I get it. I can be completely perfect for as long as you want, but I really have to go back to Winston.”
Mr. Healy looks suspicious. You could tell that he’d heard protestations of teenage perfection before.
“All righty,” he says, sounding completely unconvinced. “Best-case scenario, you’ll get some favorable probation recommendations, the DA buys it, you’ll live at home, you’ll get some treatment, you will not so much as sit behind the wheel of a car until your license is restored, you’ll act like your conditions of probation are the Ten Commandments, and twelve, eighteen months from today, you won’t have a record.”
“No record?”
I feel as if I’ve stumbled into the Magic Kingdom of making things go away. I want to kiss Billy Nash. I mean, I always want to kiss Billy Nash, but now I really want to kiss Billy Nash just after ripping off this awful suit. Except that how I can get myself physically close enough to Billy Nash to plant my kiss is a Mystery of Life because even in the Disneyland of best-case scenarios, I still can’t drive.
Mr. Healy looks very pleased with himself. “Expunged,” he says. “You’ll need to follow the rules of probation punctiliously. Because worst-case scenario, you’re spending some time in that residential facility.”
Okay, out of the Magic Kingdom and into a black-and-white girls’ prison movie with catfights and sadistic butch matrons with cattle prods.
“Well, young lady, this is what’s going to happen,” he says in a jovial tone that seems spectacularly inappropriate under the circumstances but I really don’t want to piss off the guy standing between me and total doom by pointing this out. “We’re going to get you arraigned. You won’t have to say anything except to verify your name and address. And we’re going to make sure this citation isn’t screwed up in a way that could bite you. And from what you’re telling me, you can honestly say you don’t remember a thing no matter what they ask, so no sweat there. By the time they get around to finishing up your probation report, we’ll have you squared away.”
I don’t even want to know what it means to be squared away in Mr. Healy’s world. All it brings to mind is a perfectly square cell or maybe a cube-shaped cage with bars all the way around.
“All righty, then,” he says. “Let’s get your mother back in here. Let’s get you into Twelve Step and coordinate the psycho-babble. Let’s talk to the police. Let’s get the show on the road.”
XXIX
YOU WOULD THINK THAT AFTER WEEKS OF LYING around petrified and chanting I want a lawyer over and over, I would have been a happy little camper now that my show was on the road.
You would think that now that I didn’t have to man up to put weight on both feet without flinching, and my left hand—although it would have been pretty much a straight-up catastrophe if it had been my right hand, but it wasn’t—was semi-functional and filled with prickly sensations that were actually quite the relief compared to feeling pain or nothing, I would have been striding toward the potentially swell future.
You would think that the possibility I was going to get to shrug off my life as a juvenile delinquent and walk away smiling and arrest record–free, that I could just hang around and obsess about Billy Nash pretty much all the time while my so-called legal problems kind of went poof, like a bunny disappearing into Mr. Healy’s top hat, if I just got with the program, would have been cause for major celebration.
Which could have happened if I had any idea how I was supposed to pull off any of this.
gabs123: r u there nash or is ur computer just on?
pologuy: whatcha doing?
/> gabs123: filling out forms for my lawyer. huge lawyer.
pologuy: ag only knows famous guys
gabs123: no, literally huge. fattest guy not in the circus.
pologuy: at least he sounds amusing. my guy is frightening. makes people capitulate with dirty looks. u don’t do what he says, he looks at u, ur done for
gabs123: well ur guy must b pretty amazing because how come u can drive but I can’t?
pologuy: wtf. that sucks
gabs123: so how come?
pologuy: scary lawyer fixed it. changed charge to disturbing peace or some kind of bad mischief with no drinking in it
gabs123: how????????????
pologuy: vaporized from the record? large contribution to the mayor? don’t know. u have smashed car and the blood alcohol level of a keg
gabs123: lawyer might be able to keep my blood alcohol level out of it. how would u know my blood alcohol lvl anyway?
pologuy: agnes knows all sees all screws up all
gabs123: consider the possibility that i’m the one who screwed up.
This was so not what I meant to say to him. And I go, Gabriella, if you don’t want him to think you suck, maybe it would be better if you didn’t freaking tell him that you suck.
pologuy: don’t say that. hey. miss u gabs
gabs123: me too. castle?
pologuy: can’t. agnes is doing her prison warden thing.
gabs123: xx anyway. i just don’t know how i’m going to pull this off. how do i even do this so that people buy it?
Which turns out to be so the completely right thing to say.
pologuy: i’m going to walk u through it. u can do this. u have to stay strong
gabs123: as in don’t cry and b girlie?
pologuy: as in don’t start feeling like u deserve to have something bad happen to u. or something bad will happen to u
gabs123: that is so not what i’m doing. couldn’t this just b like the take responsibility thing everyone is so hot and bothered about?
pologuy: no. taking responsibility is like ok i’m sorry and i’ll never do it again. but u can’t let yourself get into that what if i killed a baby i deserve to b locked up frame of mind
gabs123: what if i did WHAT?
pologuy: point is, u didn’t. stay with that. u have to go hey, i’m the luckiest guy on planet earth. i’m a lucky duck in a magic pond. don’t go spitting in the magic pond ok?
gabs123: ur scaring me.
pologuy: listen to me g. the universe is tossing u a free pass. don’t u want a free pass? take it. it’s not like someone died
At which point, I completely lose it.
gabs123: shit, i could have crashed into a freaking baby and i don’t even remember it!!!
pologuy: but u didn’t. u need to stop thinking about it. jackman has this technique where u put a rubber band on ur wrist and every time you think bad thoughts, u snap it
gabs123: u wore a rubber band on ur wrist? this is hard to picture.
pologuy: didn’t need to—i don’t have bad thoughts. i take what the universe gives me. like i said i’m lucky and things work out
gabs123: what if i’m not lucky?
pologuy: it’s just killer bad thoughts g. u have to stop it. predators smell fear. they get one whiff of what a big bad baby-killing girl u think u r, ur screwed
Raising the fascinating question of what I was supposed to do with what a big bad baby-killing girl it felt like I was. How the fact I was a lucky duck in a magic pond with no smashed baby and the universe raining down Get Out of Jail Free cards on my head didn’t feel as good as it was supposed to. How I had to go convince the police and the probation office and a platoon of therapists that, even though I didn’t remember a single minute of what happened, I was pretty damned sure it was never going to happen again because I was a model girl.
pologuy: wish i could break out of my house and come get u, do a bonnie and clyde thing, drive down to rooster shack for deep fry in the hood. get me a gf fix
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, GF. GF GF GF GF GF!!!!!!!!!!!!
gabs123: the crips down at rooster shack would no doubt rush right up to mulholland and break u out if they just knew how bad u need a chicken and gf fix.
pologuy: that would be bloods. did u miss the red bandanas?
gabs123: whatever.
pologuy: just don’t mix them up when ur down at the courthouse
gabs123: don’t even remind me. i have no idea what to even say at the courthouse. i just have a list of honchos to make appointments with. no idea what to SAY to them.
pologuy: nobody told u what to say?
gabs123: i think i’m just supposed to tell the truth and look sorry.
pologuy: no!!!! ur lawyer was supposed to tell u what to say. what an elephant turd
gabs123: I just have to convince a bunch of people that i’m perfect.
pologuy: that should go well
gabs123: u don’t think i’m perfect?
pologuy: ok this is not good. shit. r u home alone?
gabs123: yes. no. i mean, john’s here, but he NEVER comes out of the den so it’s the same thing. and the door to the laundry room would really work. think about it. you’d come in through the canyon and no one could see.
pologuy: shit, i shouldn’t do this. ok. i’ll call when i get there and you’ll pick up the phone on the first ring but it won’t be me ok? i’ll be picking up a book from kaplan
gabs123: what do u mean?
pologuy: IT WON’T BE ME. the phone will ring, but it won’t be me out there ok?
gabs123: whatever u say.
pologuy: i don’t think u get what kind of shit i could be in
gabs123: whatever.
XXX
HE CALLS ME ON HIS CELL FROM THE LANDING JUST outside the laundry room door. There are leaves in his clothes from climbing through the canyon, his hair is flopped down over his forehead in a golden wedge. Black T-shirt and his pupils dilating black as he steps into the dark room and stands between the washing machine and the utility closet and I hold him and he holds me back.
I can feel his skin heating up, his face hot under the stubble, his mouth soft and salty as ever, our breathing matched as ever, synchronized, my head nestled on his shoulder for a minute and then tipped back and kissing him and him kissing my eyelids and my eyebrows and my nose and my cheeks and my lips.
“Okay,” he says. “We can’t do this now. I have to teach you this stuff fast and cut out.”
It’s hard to stop. “Billy,” I say, catching my breath and trying to sound casual. “The police aren’t patrolling my laundry room. I think we’re safe.”
Billy shakes his head. “I said I was getting Andy’s Spanish book. You have no idea how screwed I am. I might have to convince my PO I was trying to leave the bad evil party but I couldn’t find my car. I might have to take a freaking acting class to pull this off.”
“Okay, I get it. Everyone is screwed. Teach me the stuff.”
So Billy sits down on the washer and I sit down on the dryer.
“Okay,” he says. “It’s not that hard. The way you’re going to get out of this is you’re going to have a drinking problem and they’re going to cure it.”
“Oh, please. Do we have to go there? My lawyer won’t shut up about my drinking problem. Can’t I have some other problem they can cure?”
“Uh, no. You’re naturally perfect for this because the only way people believe you have a drinking problem is if you deny it. If you wise up and figure out you have a drinking problem too soon, they think you’re scamming them. Just remember, you’re dealing with fools and deny your head off.”
“That shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. Except that I got plowed and ran your car into a tree.”
“Yeah, there’s that. Try it anyway.”
“What?”
“You know. Right now. Boo hoo!” he says in a squeaky voice I can only assume is supposed to be me. “How can you say I drink too much? Boo hoo.” He pats my leg. “Now you try it.”
“Jesus, Billy. You should start an improv troupe. Okay, here goes. Boo hoo! How can you say I drink too much?”
“Boo hoo! I never drink too much!”
“Boo hoo! I never drink at all. The car just happened to crash with my unlucky self in it.”
Billy grins, oh my God, the grin. “That would be with your unlucky, sober self in it.”
“My unlucky, sober self.”
“Excellent. Okay, then you keep it up for maybe a month, maybe shorter if they’re doing your probation report sooner. You have to stay on top of the timing. Then you fake your big moment of insight.”
“Let me guess. Boo hoo. I have a drinking problem.”
“You have to get a little enthusiastic about this, Gardiner. You have to sell it. Boo hoo!!!! I have a drinking problem and I’m so upset—how did I miss it?????” He slaps his forehead. “Thank you, wise, helping professionals!!!!!!! A hearty thanks to all you whores for opening my eyes!!!!”
“Boo hoo.”
“Then you lean back and let them cure you.”
Where It Began Page 13