Uncorked

by Lois Greiman

  “That’s what the senator said?”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “I don’t know what to believe. I don’t even know where Andrews’s house is.”

  She looked pale but resolute even though talk of Jackson Andrews must have stirred up the same shit-storm in her gut that it did in mine. Said shit-storm had caused me to call Cedars-Sinai three times since breakfast just to make sure Andrews was still confined to their critical care unit. So far so good. “Not in Glendale anymore?”

  I tamped down the memories that tried to engulf me and shook my head. “A family bought his place there half a year after he was incarcerated.”

  “You know that for sure?”

  “Yeah.” During a particularly serious bout of anxiety a few months earlier, I had stopped in at Andrews’ old address. It was now home to the all-American family. A dad, a mom, 1.8 kids, and four thousand plastic toys strewn about the living room like confetti on New Year’s eve.

  She nodded, thinking. “If the senator knew Rivera had been at Andrews’ home he must know where that home is.”

  “If he did he didn’t share the information with me.”

  “How about Captain Kindred? What did he say?"

  "He hasn't returned my calls."

  "Then how are you going to question Andrews's neighbors?"

  "I'm not."

  She snorted.

  “I'm not!” I said. “I can't. I don't know anything." Frustration was bubbling like an unstable volcano inside me. "No one will talk to me. I think there might be some kind of gag order. I think they're making him the fall guy."

  “That's ridiculous.”

  “It's not ridiculous, Laney. He's innocent.”

  “It’s not your job to prove that.”

  “Then whose job is it?”

  “I’m sure he has an attorney.”

  I opened my mouth to interject, but she spoke over me.

  “An excellent attorney.”

  “On a cop’s wages?”

  “His father is one of the most powerful men in California.”

  “His father thinks he’s guilty.”

  She paused, almost winced. “He didn’t say that.”

  “He barely said anything. He didn’t even want to discuss it. All he wanted to talk about was…” I shook my head. “Skank Girl.”

  “What did he say exactly?”

  “He said…” I paused to remember. “His are a passionate people and they sometimes can’t help themselves. They have to cheat on the women they love.”

  “And you let him live?”

  I slathered some Skippy’s on a freshly toasted piece of white bread. From what I had read it actually had negative nutritional value. “The restaurant was pretty busy.”

  Laney nodded her understanding, then scowled a little. If I ate as many lettuce leaves as she did, I’d scowl a whole lot more. “You know, Mac, just because the senator cheated on his wife, doesn’t mean Rivera cheated on you.”

  “Hmmm.” I made a ruminative noise and narrowed my eyes as I chewed. “Does that translate into just because his dad’s a dick, it doesn’t mean he’s a dick?”

  “Something like that.”

  I gave that some judicious consideration as I polished off my peanut butter toast. I am nothing like an environmentally friendly French Lop. “I’d believe you, Laney. Really I would. But it just so happens I know a little something about human psychology.”

  “And?”

  “And…” I pulled a pencil out from under the oven mitt atop the table and doodled fretfully on a frayed napkin. “It’s been scientifically proven that if one’s father is a dick, one has an eighty-seven-point-three percent chance of becoming a dick oneself.”

  “Eighty-seven-point-three.”

  “I might be point-seven percent off.”

  “Well, if it’s scientifically proven…”

  “One can’t argue with mathematical equations,” I said, but I knew she would anyway.

  “Mac—”

  “Listen.” I stood abruptly. “I don’t even know why we’re discussing this. The point is not whether Rivera cheated on me or not. I don’t even care. I’m over it. Moved on. There’s a new man in my life. A wonderful man. Why, just the other day…” I paused, searching frantically for his name in a mind that had suddenly turned to mush.

  “Marc,” she supplied.

  “Marc!” Fuck it. “Anyway, the point is whether Rivera is guilty or not.”

  “And if he’s not?”

  “Then he deserves to be exonerated.”

  “Even if he slept with Skank Girl?”

  I was cool. I was calm and sophisticated and grown up. Besides, I had never been with a man as wonderfully sensitive as… Dammit! Marc! Still, thinking about Skank Girl made it a little more personal. I felt the pencil snap in my hand, hid it against my appropriately sized thigh and raised my chin a little. “I’m a big enough person to look beyond that to make certain justice is served.”

  She stared at me for a couple seconds, then, “No, you’re not.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not big at all.” She stood and faced me. “Remember Maynard Carlson?”

  “No.” It wasn’t even a plausible lie. Maynard had been my main squeeze throughout my freshman year of college.

  “The guy with the Mazda and the teeth,” she reminded me. “I believe you threatened to castrate him with a spoon if he took Liz Geddy to the formal.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  She scowled. “You’re right. It wasn’t a spoon.” She paused, thinking, face scrunched up in a manner that would make a lesser woman look like a garden gnome. “It was a cantaloupe—”

  “A melon baller!” I snapped, then drew a steadying breath and gave her a who cares kind of look. “That was a long time ago.” There was no point denying the castration threat. Have I mentioned Laney and her freakishly accurate memory? “And I think you’ll agree that since then I have grown up considerably.”

  She ignored my last statement and nodded. “A melon baller. That was it. You were going to castrate the man with a melon baller.”

  “I wouldn’t have really done it, of course,” I said, although teenage Chrissy had been even crazier than thirty-something Chrissy. “Probably.”

  “But you threatened to do it. You threatened him and you didn’t even like him.”

  “I did too like him. He had really nice…fingernails.”

  She narrowed her eyes as if thinking hard. The expression scared the hell out of me. Sometimes when Laney thinks hard, things spontaneously combust.

  “What?” I asked cautiously.

  “You lied to me,” she said. Her voice was level and thoughtful, her gaze elsewhere, as if she were carefully picking her way through a minefield.

  “What are you talking about? No, I didn’t. He had exceptional fingernails. Exemplary fingernails. He kept them nicely trimmed and hardly ever chewed them. In fact…” I was prepared to pontificate further and the state of his nails, but she gasped softly.

  I started and jerked my eyes expectantly toward the front door, but was pleasantly surprised to see that no marauding bandits were attacking just yet.

  “You never believed Rivera cheated on you,” Laney said.

  I yanked my gaze back toward her, but her attention remained elsewhere, as if she were divining the truth from some unseen force.

  “What?” I rasped. “That’s crazy. Of course I did. I saw them together in his car. They were—” I began, but she barely even noticed I existed.

  “I was wondering why you were so calm. Why there were no death threats or cherry bombs or—”

  “That cherry bomb incident was years ago.”

  “For a while I thought you must not care about him as much as I thought you did, but now I realize the truth.” She turned slowly toward me, expression placid, eyes eerie. “You just wanted a way out.”

  “What are you talking about? A way out of what?”

  “Out of love.”


  I stared at her for a second, then threw my head back like a hyena on a hot scent and cackled. “That’s insane.”

  She didn’t argue, but I wasn’t done raving.

  “Being a star has made you delusional.”

  “Living alone has made you a coward.”

  I was honestly stricken. Laney doesn’t say mean things. Not unless they are absolutely true and might somehow be helpful. But I was far beyond caring about that kind of ridiculous detail. “I am not a coward.”

  “Then why didn’t you make Rivera explain himself?”

  “He did explain.”

  “Once. He explained it once. After which, you failed to demand a hundred replays of the situation. Instead, you simply decided not to believe him.”

  “Because he’s male.”

  She gave me a WTF look.

  “He’s male,” I explained. “And therefore he lies.”

  “That’s the dumbest…” She paused, took a deep breath. “What exactly did you see?”

  “What?” I felt a little skittish suddenly, though I couldn’t have said why. I mean, I had the moral high ground.

  “When you saw them in his car, what were they doing?”

  “She was sitting on his lap.”

  “On his lap. In the car.”

  “It can be done. Trust me.” In fact, if one was truly motivated it could be done while wearing a tuba. Go, teenage Chrissy!

  “All right. What were they wearing?”

  I swallowed and steadied my hands. “He was naked.”

  “Naked.”

  “Yes.”

  “You could see that even though she was sitting on his lap?”

  I gritted my teeth. “Listen, Laney, I know Rivera. He’s not the Dalai Lama or anything.”

  “So you know he had his pants off. Somehow divined it.”

  “Yes.”

  “So when he saw you…when he came running after you, did he put on his pants first?”

  My lips twitched.

  “He didn’t follow you buck naked, did he?”

  I glanced toward the door.

  “Did he?”

  “Of course not. We were in the middle of Highland Avenue.”

  “But he had his pants on by the time he caught up to you.”

  “He’s very fast,” I said.

  She remained silent, watching me.

  “He’s had a lot of practice. The man’s a—”

  “He didn’t have his pants off, did he, Mac?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t matter what he had off. I knew his intent.”

  “So you were ready to take a melon baller to Maynard, who, for the record, did not have particularly dazzling fingernails, but you weren’t willing to even hang around to find out what Rivera was doing?”

  “I knew what he was doing.”

  “Really? Then Skank Girl must have been naked.”

  I pursed my lips. “For your information, people don’t have to be entirely unclothed to have sex.”

  She looked puzzled. “Are you sure? That’s not what I’ve been told.”

  I sputtered something nonsensical at her, but before I was even done, she interrupted.

  “Nobody wants to be hurt, Mac.”

  “That’s exactly—”

  “But you can’t bail just because you’re afraid it might happen.”

  “He propositioned—”

  “I don’t lie to you,” she said, and there was something about her expression that sucked all the air out of my lungs.

  I stood there frozen for several seconds, then closed my eyes and pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. “I just…“ I drew a careful breath. “When I saw them together, I... I couldn’t stand to have my heart…” I stopped myself before the words spilled out, but it was already too late.

  “Oh, Mac…” She slipped out of her chair and hugged me. “You don’t know he’ll break your heart.”

  I laughed. “I didn’t…I wasn’t going to say that. You know my heart’s made of shoe leather. I just didn’t want to be…” I managed a shrug even though she had a death grip on my shoulders. “Disappointed.”

  She drew away a couple of inches. “You don’t know he’ll disappoint you, either.”

  I found myself swallowed up by Laney’s caring. “Why would it be different this time?” My voice was very small.

  “Sometimes things change,” she said. “Sometimes things get better.”

  I looked at her, trying for a cynical expression, trying to ignore the fact that my eyes were stinging and it probably wasn’t allergies.

  “Sometimes there are happy endings,” she said. “You know that. Just think of—”

  “Don’t mention Solberg,” I warned, but the threat might have been a little offset by a sniffle.

  “Solberg and I are—”

  “Don’t say you’re blissfully happy."

  “—blissfully happy.”

  “Shit,” I said, and wiped my nose with the back of one hand.

  “Before him I didn’t know sex—”

  “Dear God,” I said, and tried to pull away, but Laney has a grip like a grizzly.

  “—could be so great.”

  “Ohh…” I rolled my eyes. “I’m in hell.”

  “He’s so gentle and—”

  I covered my ears with my hands and started singing God Bless America. It’s been said that I couldn’t carry a tune if you shoved it in an alligator tote, but I didn’t care. I sang it at the top of my lungs, blurting out lyrics I hadn’t even known when I was in elementary school.

  “I know where he is."

  I stopped singing, tilted my head at her, removed my hands. “What?”

  “Rivera,” she said, expression solemn, eyes steady. “He's being held at Men's Central."

  Chapter 10

  I’d like to apologize…but I’m Irish.

  —Shamus McMullen, Chrissy’s great grandfather, shortly before beginning the Grand Brawl o’ London in 1889

  The gray block building that makes up the largest jail in the world was only slightly more depressing than I expected it to be. I arrived there at eight in the morning, presented my picture I.D., got searched, surrendered my cell phone and waited until I was ushered into the visiting area with fourteen other guests.

  The previous evening with Laney had been enlightening and terrifying; despite myself, I had to reluctantly admit that I had no real proof that Rivera had cheated on me. Maybe Laney was right. Perhaps fear and latent Irish stubbornness had made me jump to conclusions. I owed him the chance to explain himself. And perhaps…just maybe, I owed him an apology.

  I waited impatiently in front of the glass partition. Rivera arrived in a few minutes. He looked lean and hard and tired. His gaze settled on me for just an instant before he sat down and picked up the phone that connected our worlds. I did the same. “What’s wrong?” His voice was taut and gravelly.

  I stared at him. I had had no way of knowing how seeing him dressed in cheap blue prison garb would affect me. But suddenly I felt weak and watery. My lips moved. Nothing came out.

  “God damn it, McMullen! What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” I tried to buck up. I mean, he was the one in jail, and he wasn’t crying. In fact, he just looked kind of pissed about the whole thing. His gaze swept the part of me he could see above the counter. “You’re okay?”

  “Yes. Of course. It’s you—” Had there not been a guard, a glass wall, fourteen other visitors, and a million unresolved problems between us, I would have gladly thrown myself into his arms and reenacted a jungle scene from Animal Kingdom.

  “What happened?” he asked. “What’d you do?”

  I shook my head. “What do you mean?”

  He drew a deep breath, flaring his nostrils. The gesture reminded me a little of his father and a little of Spirit, stallion of the Cimarron. Both were sexy. “You didn’t call D, did you?”

  “D?” Dagwood Dean Daley, better known as D, if you recall, was the Chicago gangster
who had come to my aid on more than one occasion. He and Rivera might still have some unresolved issues, even though they had duked it out on one auspicious occasion. “No. Why would I?”

  “Don’t get him involved,” he warned.

  It was said that if D’s loans weren’t returned in a timely fashion the borrower would sometimes turn up missing internal organs. I didn’t believe a word of it. Usually.

  “Chrissy!”

  “I didn’t call him,” I said.

  He scowled at me. “How about Angler?”

  “Vinny?” Vincent Angler was a defensive lineman for the L.A. Lions. He had helped me once, too, and even though I hardly knew him, I liked to throw his name around whenever an opportunity presented itself. “No.”

  Rivera lowered his brows even farther. “Are your brothers somehow involved in this?”

  “Of course not.”

  He pursed his lips. “Then, who’d you piss off?”

  Anger washed the tears right out of my eyes. “I didn’t piss anyone—” I began but he laughed. The sound was low and rumbly.

  I fortified my resolve and drew a deep breath, determined to start over, to think clearly, maybe even to apologize for my past transgressions. My lips and my sphincter tightened against the idea. Turns out I’d rather eat Spirit’s wild horse dung than admit a mistake, and I was pretty damn sure Rivera wasn’t going to make it easy.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m…” I shook my head. It wasn’t as if I had never apologized in the past. I’d just never done it without someone holding my head over a toilet bowl. I swallowed. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  His brows rose a fraction of an inch and maybe his body relaxed a little, but he said nothing.

  I cleared my throat. “You look good.” He looked, in fact, good enough to put on top of a cake and devour whole. Or put in a cake. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those women who’s attracted to criminals. Except for Nicolas Cage in Con Air and Sean Connery in anything.

  “Say something,” I said.

  “I’m waiting for you to get around to your reason for coming.”

  “I just stopped by to make sure you were all right.”

  The left corner of his mouth quirked.