Uncorked

by Lois Greiman

  I was getting his shirt wet. I eased back a little and wiped my nose. “I was so scared.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and stroked my hair. “I should have known you were in trouble when I saw you weren’t home.” He pushed a few tear-stained strands from my face.

  I tried to follow the mood, but generally when people try to kill me Rivera has been there accusing me of some heinous crime. It was hard to adjust.

  “What happened?”

  I hiccupped once, then shuddered and told him the story.

  He shook his head when I was finished.

  “Really,” I said. “It wasn’t my fault. He had a gun. I just didn’t know what else—”

  “Christ, Christina.” He scowled, brows beetling over beautiful sea-foam eyes. “Of course it wasn’t your fault. Drag’s a certified nut job.”

  “You know him?”

  “I know of him. Everyone on the force knows of him.”

  I nodded. “Lavonn’s his…” I searched for the proper word. “Girlfriend.” It didn’t seem quite right. The term made it sound as if they would be attending the sock hop together.

  “Seriously?”

  “She used to be with Jackson Andrews.”

  “No fuck?”

  “None,” I said, and wondered if that would change any time soon.

  “Are all your friends this interesting?”

  I sighed, kicked off my sandals and tucked my feet under my butt. “I don’t think she’s my friend.”

  “You kidding? If half of what I’ve heard about Drag is true, you just saved her life.”

  Yeah, so shouldn’t she have been nicer to me? I gave a mental sigh and a physical shrug. “Sometimes individuals feel guilty for being with partners who abuse them. Often they then blame others in an attempt to alleviate that guilt.”

  He stared at me. “You may be the nicest person I’ve ever met.”

  I stared back, thinking of how I’d just wanted to slap an abused mother across the back of her head. “I hope not,” I said.

  He laughed a little as he smoothed a few hairs behind my left ear. “And the most modest.”

  Wow, I thought, and cleared my throat. “What are you doing here? Really.”

  “I was driving by your house, saw the lights on.”

  “You were driving through Sunland at three o’clock in the morning?”

  He stared into my eyes, expression sober again. “I know you’re still hung up on Rivera.”

  Why did people keep saying that? “We broke up,” I said.

  He smiled. “Oh, that’s right. You’re with someone else now.”

  “Marcus,” I said, and found I was inordinately proud of the fact that I’d remembered his name.

  “He’s a lucky man.”

  “He’s in Pinsk.”

  “Do you mean Minsk?”

  I shrugged. “He’s a very important psychiatrist.”

  “Did they have a mental health emergency in…wherever the hell it is?”

  “He’s signing his book.”

  “Ahhh,” he said, and stroked my cheek with his knuckles.

  “It might be a best-seller.”

  “Meanwhile, you’re here all alone?”

  “I have Harley,” I said, and stroked his ear. He’d placed his head on my knee, apparently forgiving me for my suspected liaison with the Maltese.

  “Nice dog,” he said, leaning in. “But don’t you get lonely?”

  I swallowed. “I have Francois.”

  “Francois?”

  My eyes locked on his. Turns out I would rather be accused of any number of heinous crimes than have to explain why I had given my vibrator a French name.

  I cleared my throat again, ready to make up some outrageous lie, but just then he kissed me.

  Chapter 24

  Thinking; it’s not for everyone.

  —Chrissy McMullen, age seven, cognizant of such things at an early age

  Heat steamed through my body. I once heard that near-death experiences make people want to copulate, that awareness of their mortality makes them need to feel alive. Personally, I always thought that orgasms alone would be a big enough motivator. But right then I really did need to feel alive.

  At least that’s what I told myself as I kissed him back.

  His hand scooped around my neck, drawing me closer. I was breathing hard by the time he lifted me into his arms. I didn’t resist.

  “My God, you’re beautiful,” he said, and kissed me again. It was a good thing he was carrying me, because I was too weak-kneed to speak. Not only was he not accusing me of murder, he was alleviating the necessity of walking and telling me I was pretty. The three steps to guaranteed sex.

  He carried me to the bedroom and kicked the door shut with his foot. I sighed as he laid me down, moaned as he cupped my breast.

  “Christina,” he whispered, and kissed my neck. “You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to do this.”

  I closed my eyes as he opened my blouse. His hands felt warm against my skin, and then he lay down beside me, long and firm. I arched against him.

  “Jack,” I whispered, and suddenly the world stopped.

  I snapped my eyes open.

  He stared at me. I stared at him. He blinked.

  “Eric,” I said. “I meant Eric.”

  Something sparked in his eyes, but after a moment he shook his head. “It’s all right.” His voice was nothing more than a murmur.

  “No. It’s not. I’m—”

  He put his fingers on my lips. “You’ve been through a hell of a lot in the last couple weeks.”

  “That doesn’t mean—” I began, but he kissed me again. His body felt hard against mine. My own revved up. A man. A living breathing man who was neither in jail nor in some country I couldn’t locate without a magnifying glass. I had hit the mother lode. But guilt and shame were alive and well even at the mother lode. I put a hand on his chest, but my ovaries, suspecting treason, began sending dire warning to my fingers.

  Don’t do it, they said. Don’t you dare do it.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t.” I whispered the words, but my female parts heard me and immediately began screaming obscenities.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, and gave me that smile that had certainly made stronger women offer to bear his babies.

  “No, she’s not fucking sure. The bitch is nuts!” Turns out my female parts can be pretty rude.

  “I’m sure,” I whispered.

  “I’m not trying to take Rivera’s place, you know.”

  “Marcus. I’m dating Marcus.”

  “That’s right,” he said, and smiled.

  I winced. “It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

  “Would you think less of me if I said I didn’t give a flying fuck about fair when you look at me like that?” He stroked my cheek. I managed not to erupt into multiple orgasms and wriggled. He raised his brows, but I was just trying to wiggle out from under him. I swear I was.

  Eventually, he slid off me. I sat up and put my feet on the bed. He swung his over the side and stared at me. There was no anger in his eyes. Only disappointment.

  “So how did you get mixed up with a bottom feeder like Drag?” he asked.

  I exhaled carefully. “I went to see Lavonn. We met a while back when…” I began, but I wasn’t ready to relive those memories. “She used to live with Jackson Andrews. I thought maybe she could help me figure things out so I went to see her.”

  “At two o’clock in the morning?”

  I shook my head. “No. A few days ago. Turns out she’s living with Drag now. When she called me, she was pretty…” I steadied my hands on the mattress. “Distressed.”

  “Distressed. No shit. She’s living with a fucking lunatic.”

  “Not anymore.”

  He snorted.

  I raised my eyes to his. “She left him,” I said.

  “Oh, come on. You know as well as I do that she’ll be back with him before breakfast.”

  “That’s not necessar
ily true.”

  “You’re right. She might find someone even worse.”

  “He shot her dog,” I said. Harley whined at the door. “I’m not sure there is anyone worse.”

  His shrug suggested he was less than convinced. “It’s nice of you to try to save her but…” He shook his head.

  “You don’t think people can change?”

  “I do if you do.”

  I thought about my own high school years, during which I had participated in belching contests on more than one occasion. “I hope they can.”

  “Tell me the truth, Christina,” he said. “Is it that same kindness of yours that makes you try to exonerate Rivera, or is it something else?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, look at yourself, honey. You’re…” He skimmed his gaze down my body. “Well, Lavonn doesn’t exactly look like she’d be your sorority sister.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the only reason you were in that neighborhood is because you’re trying to get Rivera off the hook.”

  I considered denying it, but I was too exhausted. “He’s innocent.”

  No one spoke for a moment. His eyes were very steady on mine. “A man will do a lot when he’s in love.”

  I stared back, but I wasn’t ready to explore that option or debate the possibilities.

  I shook my head. “He didn’t do it.”

  “Tell me the truth. What has he done to earn such loyalty?”

  “It’s not loyalty. It’s realism. Emotions have no part in this. I’m with…” Aw, fuck. Not again.“…Marcus! I just know Rivera didn’t shoot anybody.”

  He laughed a little. “Well,” he said, and sighed as he rose to his feet. “Maybe you’re right. Imp seemed to think the same thing.”

  “What?”

  He looked momentarily chagrined, then shook his head, seemingly at his own absentmindedness. “Never mind. I’m sorry I got overly”—he nodded toward the bed, looking sheepish—“enthusiastic. I hope this won’t stand in the way of our friendship.”

  “What’s an Imp?” I asked.

  He laughed and turned toward the door. “Next time you have a friend in trouble, call me instead of charging into the fire, will you?”

  I stood up. “What did Imp say?”

  His shoulders slumped a little, and for a moment he looked infinitely sad. “I’d give my right arm to have that kind of loyalty.”

  “It’s not loyalty!” I repeated. “I’m with…” I really think it was just fatigue that made me forget that time.

  “Marcus?” he suggested.

  I shook off the pesky forgetfulness and forged on. “Who’s Imp?”

  He stared at me for a few long seconds, scowled and stepped back toward me. “Forget I said anything, Christina. Please.”

  “He knows something about Rivera, doesn’t he?”

  He shook his head slowly, ignoring my question. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

  “What does Imp know?’

  He exhaled heavily, then glanced toward the door as if expecting to see Drag come barging through with a battering ram. There was another prolonged silence then, “There’s talk that she has information.”

  “Imp’s a she?”

  “Forget it. Please. You don’t have to worry about Rivera. He’s a big boy.”

  Did all these cops shower together or what?

  “I know he is,” I said.

  “But you’ll worry anyway.”

  “No. I mean…where would I find this Imp?”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Where—”

  “Christina…” He took my left hand in both of his. “You can’t. Drop it. Please. I don’t even know where to find her myself since she quit per—”

  “Quit what?”

  “Leave it alone.”

  My mind was spinning wildly, trying to patch the clues together in an attempt to form the next question. “Is Imp her first name or—”

  He laughed out loud. “Jesus, woman, word around the station was that you were a tiger. I was kind of thinking they meant it in a different way.”

  I was too revved up to be embarrassed.

  “Help me learn the truth, Eric,” I said. “For Rivera’s sake.”

  He shook his head.

  “He’s a fallen officer. A brother. A—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Then do it for me,” I said, and stepped toward him, looking up through my lashes as I slipped my hands around his biceps. They were pretty good biceps. “Please.”

  Our lips were inches apart.

  He kissed me, then he stepped back and shook his head as if awakening from a dream.

  “He doesn’t deserve you,” he said, and whipping the door open, left me alone with my frustrations.

  Chapter 25

  Babies are God’s way of saying, “What the hell were you thinking?”

  —Connie McMullen (Chrissy’s mother) while intoxicated and unforgivably honest

  Fueled by terror and hormones, I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

  The Westlake cops showed up on my stoop sometime before dawn. I gave them as detailed a report as I could then woke Lavonn so she could add her two cents. She was atypically subdued, and after learning that Drag had not yet been apprehended, she went back to bed.

  I would have liked to have done the same, but there was still a good dose of craziness swimming around in my head. I was close to finding the answers that would prove Rivera’s innocence. I knew it. But first I had to form the right questions.

  For instance, this Imp…who was she? What was she? I checked the internet first, but my Google results, while intriguing, were unhelpful. I waited until seven o’clock in the morning to begin phoning everyone I knew: cops, attorneys, beggar men, thieves. But even my friends hadn’t heard of an Imp.

  By eight I was wound as tight as a rubber-band plane and had learned approximately nothing. Three people had hung up on me, seven hadn’t answered, and one had cast aspersions on my mother’s origins. Two hours later I was back at the computer in my little office. My eyes felt like they had been sautéed in battery acid.

  At eight thirty-seven Jenny called from the emergency clinic to say that although Charlie had survived surgery, his condition remained guarded.

  "Who was that?"

  I jumped at the sound of Lavonn's voice and twisted about intending to scold her for scaring the crap out of me, but the sight of her puffy eyes and grim expression stopped the words before they escaped.

  "It was the animal hospital. Charlie made it through surgery," I rushed to add, "but his condition's still…well, he'll need some time to recover."

  Her lips trembled before she turned away and hurried into the kitchen.

  "But Dr. Kemah is an excellent veterinarian." I rose to follow her. "I'm sure-"

  "Don't you have nothing to eat around here?" Her tone was gruff as she shifted through my cupboards, but I wasn't forgetting the misery I'd seen on her face only moments before.

  "You don't have to be so tough, Lavonn. I'm your friend. You can-"

  "My friend!" She pivoted around, eyes blazing. "If it wasn't for you I'd still be living in Glendale. Still have my babies and my car and my-"

  “And your drug-dealing maniac!" I snarled.

  “Jackson wasn’t no—”

  I held up my hand to ward off any possible histrionics…or facts. “My apologies,” I said, determined to take the high ground. But high ground or not, there might have been a bit of snootiness in my voice. “I didn’t mean to impugn Jackson Andrews’s stellar reputation.”

  She looked at me with crafty eyes. “Do you have any idea what the penalty is for defamation, either libel or slander, in the state of California, Ms. McMullen?”

  I stared at her, brows shooting through my hairline. Her Ebonics had been replaced with tight-assed diction and a holier-than-thou expression. “What?” I asked, tone flat.

  She snorted softly and propped a hand on her ri
ght hip. “You think you’re the only one in this house that can talk snotty?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, you ain’t. Not after twenty-eight months at Southwestern,” she said, and turning on one bare foot, started looking through my drawers.

  I stared at her for a good ten seconds before, “You have a law degree?”

  She didn’t bother to quit rummaging through my stuff long enough to answer me. “I didn’t say I had no degree.”

  “You went to college for”—I waved my hand dramatically—“forever…and you didn’t graduate?” It was entirely possible that she was even dumber than I thought. Then again, it was far more probable that she was much, much smarter than I had anticipated. “Why? What happened?”

  “Life,” she said, and reaching up, began shuffling through a jungle of sugary cereals. “Life happened.”

  “How long before you would have graduated?”

  She shrugged and pulled a box of crispy something-or-other off a shelf. “Year. Maybe two.”

  “Why in the world didn’t you—” I began, but she whirled around and slammed the box down on the table, jolting my words to a halt.

  “I guess you never spent nine months puking up your guts, huh? You never cursed the little shit inside of you, only to push it into the light of day and realize you never loved nothing like you love it. I guess you never been awake thirty hours straight waitin’ for teeth to come in or prayin’ he’ll get over the colic before you cut your wrists.“ She tilted her head at me. “I guess you never had no babies, huh!” she said.

  I blinked at her, deflated but not sure if I should be. “Well, no, but surely—”

  “Then you got no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

  I stood there speechless. I mean, I’m all for women’s rights and brave mother bears and all that, but she seemed to be impugning my chosen path, so I girded my loins and marched out my professional tone. “I realize it can be quite difficult to juggle a family and a career, but if you had just—”

  “Juggle!” she snarled, leaning so close to my face that I could see the pores on her nostrils. My professional tone may have pissed off the mother bear a little. “They ain’t grapefruit. They ain’t…” She waved a hand vaguely…possibly toward Cleveland, where her own non-grapefruit were supposedly stored. “Baseballs. Maybe just ’cause they’s black, you think they can be tossed around like so much garbage. Like they’s—”