Black Leather

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  “In the parking lot. Up against some pickup truck.”

  “Damn,” Irene said.

  Cynthia seemed to collapse in upon herself a little bit more.

  Irene couldn’t help her. “This isn’t looking good, Cyn,” she said.

  Cynthia began to cry. Irene fetched a box of tissues from the bathroom and threw them on the coffee table, then sipped her coffee while Cynthia blew her nose and collected herself. She couldn’t afford to baby Cynthia.

  “I didn’t do it, Irene,” she said, beginning to hiccup. “I swear to God. I went there to keep an eye on you.”

  “Let’s not start with that bullshit again,” Irene said.

  “I’m not. I danced with him, and I had too much to drink. We went out into the parking lot, we... you know, and then he ditched me. He ditched me and left me with his ugly little brother. So I went home. I went back to the—” she stopped to blow her nose again— “motel.” She sniffed, and blew, and wiped at her sore eyes. “The last time I saw Warren, he was with you.”

  That last sentence lay between them like a ticking time bomb. Cynthia crumpled the tissue and defiantly threw it on the floor. She pulled three more out of the box, blew her nose, then sat up straighter. She grabbed her coffee, sloshing some out onto the coffee table, took a gulp, then looked at Irene. “He was with you at the bar. You guys were talking.”

  “I wasn’t there, Cyn,” Irene said softly.

  “Maybe you did it, Irene. I know about that weird little sex thing you like to do.”

  “That’s enough.”

  “Blades, that’s your kink, isn’t it? I’ve known about that since high school. You left years worth of gossip material after you graduated, did you ever know that? God, why didn’t I see this before?” Cynthia wiped her face on the sleeve of her blouse, completely forsaking the tissues. “You and Warren, you were at his place and you started with the blades, and it got a little out of hand, didn’t it? Didn’t it? You killed him. You killed him.” With a self-satisfied look, Cynthia crossed her arms over her chest and flounced back into the couch. “I want another attorney.”

  Irene pulled her chair a little bit closer and leaned toward Cynthia. She spoke in a low, level, carefully modulated, serious voice. “Don’t be stupid. They have to prove that you did it. If you didn’t do it, then they aren’t going to convict you.”

  “I don’t want you representing me.”

  “Think about it, Cynthia,” Irene said. “You think very carefully before requesting another attorney. I’m up for an appointment to the bench. I’m not going to lose this case.”

  Cynthia’s mouth curled up into an ugly snarl. “You killed him,” she said softly, “and put your wretched little souvenir in my luggage.”

  “Cynthia...” Irene said.

  “You set me up.”

  “Cynthia.”

  “I want nothing to do with you.”

  “Cynthia,” Irene said softly, then paused to maximize the effect of what she had to say, “there is no one more qualified to prove reasonable doubt in this case than me.”

  Chapter 8

  Cynthia sat on the floor in her newly rented, nasty, dingy, cheap little apartment. After the luxury of Irene’s high-rise, this boxy little thing with the cheap carpeting, the small, high windows, the constant sirens and the freeway noise was going to be hard to get used to. Even worse were the neighbors.

  But she couldn’t exactly complain. Joseph had put a second mortgage on his house in order to post her bail and pay a couple of months' rent.

  Surrounded by boxes, she sat on the floor, rocking back and forth. Not too long ago, she had been Mrs. Joseph Schneider, and she was professionally groomed and traveled in socially respectable circles, rubbing elbows with professors’ wives. She lived in an almost-paid-for home with a view of the Bay and slept with one of the best looking and most interesting men she’d ever known.

  She was in love. She was envied. She was happy. She had an identity. She knew who she was, where she was, and what was expected of her.

  At least she knew where she stood socially. In retrospect, she didn’t know where she stood so well in her marriage.

  And now she was a thirty-year-old wreck, a mess, living in the Haight behind some restaurant, and being tried for murder. She didn’t even have any furniture, just boxes stacked along the wall of the tiny living room and more boxes in the minuscule, claustrophobic bedroom. And the tacky little dresser that Irene made her move out with the rest of her stuff, so Irene could have her office back. Irene had to have her office back. Irene and her office. Irene could have her fucking office back, it didn’t matter to Cynthia.

  The phone cord snaked across the threadbare, hideous orange carpeting with its irregular-shaped stains. Cynthia rocked back and forth as she looked at the telephone. She’d tried unpacking, but all she managed to do was pace back and forth. She didn’t want to unpack anything here. She didn’t want to stay here more than another five minutes. Sleeping here was out of the question.

  Joseph could have found her a decent place. Joseph made enough money. Or Irene. She had plenty of money, lots more than Joseph.

  She regarded the telephone, reached out and touched it, brought her hand back, bit her lip, reached out, picked up the receiver, put it to her ear, put it back down. She rocked back and forth a few more times, then with firm resolve, she picked up the telephone and dialed.

  “Joseph Schneider.”

  “Hi, Joseph.”

  “Cynthia?”

  “Joseph, please. Don’t hang up on me. I need you to recommend another attorney.”

  “Another attorney?”

  “You must know a couple of attorneys, Joseph, maybe somebody over at the law school? There’s something wrong with this, Joseph, I think Irene killed that guy and is framing me.”

  “Whoa. Settle down now.”

  Cynthia’s agitation grew, and she gripped her ankle with one hand in a vise grip. She didn’t want Joseph to know how worked up she was. She had to appear to be a normal, calm human being in front of him some time. “You do those psychological profiles, Joseph,” she said, “you should be able to run some tests or do something to prove that she’s a psycho—”

  “Cynthia, get a hold of yourself. Where are you? Are you in your new place?”

  “This hellhole, you mean,” Cynthia snorted. “It’s a fucking pit.” She was sorry the second it escaped her mouth.

  “This is a very stressful time for you, and I’m sorry about that,” Joseph said. “But Irene is your sister. She has your best interests at heart.”

  Cynthia took a deep breath and looked down at her ankle. She released her grip on it and saw red finger imprints on her skin. What else would she expect Joseph to say?

  “Have you looked into getting a job?”

  Cynthia felt exasperated beyond all limits. “How could I work? How could I possibly work? You tell me how I can go about finding a job while I’m on trial for my life, being defended by the person who did the killing?” Cynthia jumped up and began pacing again. “She did it, Joseph.”

  “Cyn—”

  “I’m not being delusional, goddamn it, she did it! I didn’t do it.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone.

  Cynthia knew she had to chill out or she’d alienate everybody, most specifically Joseph, the one she counted on the most. “Please, Joseph, could you look into it? She was there in Los Angeles. She was there that night, in that bar, and she denies it. Please? Please, Joseph? For me? Jesus Christ, I feel so helpless.”

  “All right, Cynthia,” Joseph said. “I’ll see what I can do. You get yourself together, now, all right? Get yourself a job and get settled in.” Then with his voice softer, lower, “Don’t make me worry about you.”

  “Okay,” she said, her voice sounding smaller than she would have liked. “Thanks.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you,” she said and tried not to expect a response.

  “Bye now,” he said, and h
ung up.

  She listened to the dial tone for a few seconds, trying not to dwell on the fact that she got no I love you, too. The whole conversation hadn’t gone exactly the way she hoped it would. It didn’t sound as though she could count on Joseph to help her. He wasn’t convinced.

  Cynthia began pacing again, back and forth in the little living room. She tried running in place to take the edge off her anxiety, but that didn’t help, either. She was angry with herself as much as anything else.

  What else did she expect? That Joseph would believe that fair-haired, goody-two-shoes, do-no-wrong, professional Irene killed that big indian sex machine? That Joseph was going to profess his undying love for her after he’d only given her enough money to rent a fucking windowless box to live in where the rag pickers slept right on the other side of the wall?

  You’re out of control, Cynthia, she told herself. You set yourself up for just exactly that response from Joseph.

  A half dozen times she poked at the phone with her foot, but it didn’t make much sense to call him again. That would only make it worse.

  She tried to think, she tried to formulate some plan, but all she could think about was Joseph, and how much he was like Myron. She’d lost Myron and now she was losing Joseph. The two most important men in her life.

  Myron. God, how she missed him since he died. She remembered the day he married their mother. Being a junior bridesmaid was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to Cynthia. She was seven and Irene was ten, but they looked grown up in their long pink dresses and their hair all curled up with ribbons in it.

  Someone helped Ellie with her long blonde hair, pinning it up with ribbons and flowers wound through it, and then when she stepped into her wedding dress and zipped it up the back, she, too, was transformed into a fairy princess.

  Irene, being older, carried Myron’s ring in a velvet box, and Cynthia carried a silver basket full of rose petals.

  When the wedding music had started, Cynthia’s heart began to pound, and her mother crouched down and kissed first Irene’s cheek, and then hers, then with her thumb, rubbed off the lipstick mark she’d left. “Remember to walk slowly,” she said. Then she gave them both hugs, the church doors opened, and the two girls began walking toward the minister.

  Myron stood at the end of the aisle, and Cynthia’s heart started pounding all over again at the sight of him. His face was warm and brown, and he wore a fancy white suit, and she could see the church candles reflected in his eyeglasses. He was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. She couldn’t wait until she was old enough to be a fairy princess, going to meet her own brown prince at the end of the aisle.

  When the ceremony was over, and the groom kissed the bride, Cynthia was a little bit embarrassed. She’d seen her mother and Myron kiss before, of course, but not in front of a whole bunch of people. And this time she watched Irene watch them kiss. Irene had a funny look to her, and when Cynthia’s eyes followed hers, she saw that Irene was focused on Myron’s full lips as they met their mother’s, pulled away, stretched in a smile, then went back for another kiss. Their lips kind of stuck together a little bit as they pulled apart, and then they grinned at each other and touched foreheads.

  Cynthia looked at Irene, who was still staring. Cynthia nudged her. Irene came back to herself, grinned and nudged her back.

  Cynthia had never forgotten that wedding. She’d never forgotten that kiss.

  Her wedding to Joseph had been an exact duplicate. It had been the finest moment of Cynthia’s life, complete with fairy princess dress and long liplock after the ceremony. Irene stood up for her, and watched her kiss Joseph.

  The only thing that could have made it better would have been the presence of her mom and Myron. Then they could see that Irene wasn’t the only person making correct choices in life.

  But she was glad they weren’t around to see her make such a mess of that fine marriage so full of promise. They’d have been disappointed in her.

  Cynthia stopped pacing, and stood looking out the small living room window into the neighbor’s trashed-out yard.

  Her mother had made her marriage work to Myron. Their marriage lasted almost fifteen years, until the plane accident sent them on to their reward together. “If I don’t do it, who will?” Ellie was fond of saying, and she did. She did whatever she needed to do in order to keep a sane and happy household. She’d learned, Cynthia guessed, from the disaster of her first marriage, the marriage to Cynthia and Irene’s father.

  What had Cynthia sacrificed in order to make her marriage work? Anything?

  No, she’d left it all in Joseph’s competent hands. He decided when the wedding was on, and he decided when the marriage was off.

  What had she learned from this disastrous first marriage? Anything?

  Was she going to let somebody else decide the rest of her life?

  She went back to the phone, sat on the floor, found the phone book, looked up the number, and then dialed the airline. It was clear to her that if she was going to be saved, she was going to have to save herself.

  Irene would be furious.

  To hell with Irene. This wasn’t her life. This wasn’t her jail sentence. This wasn’t her marriage. “If I don’t do it, who will?” she whispered.

  Before the sun went down, Cynthia looked out the airplane window as it landed then taxied past the sign: Los Angeles International Airport.

  ~~~

  Joseph nervously fidgeted while he waited for Irene to arrive. He was early, he was agitated after her call, anxious about seeing her, uncertain about what she wanted or why she wanted to meet. To his recollection, they had never been alone before, not really, and the truth was, Joseph liked it that way. He sat, outwardly calm, in the bar in the bistro Irene had suggested, sipped his wine and waited.

  There was a dangerous quality about Irene that drew Joseph. It was more than her feline sexuality, it was more than her aura of power. There was something dark and dirty about her. There was some sootiness under that cool professional exterior that intrigued Joseph, and gave him thoughts well beyond what any self-respecting brother-in-law should think about his wife’s sister.

  Irene was a political animal, always in the spotlight in the Chronicle. She spoke at all the right conferences, she lobbied for the right causes, she attended the right parties. Irene Nottingham was a name familiar in the columns as she did this or that, schmoozed him or her or won thus and such high-profile case. Irene Nottingham was big news in San Francisco, as trial attorneys go, and it could be that she showed this bit of black lace in her personality by design. Irene was no fool; everything she did, as far as Joseph could calculate, was done with precision. And giving off this aura of dark mystery was just another submachine gun in her arsenal.

  When Joseph was thirteen, he found his father’s stash of girlie magazines in a box in the garage. He was at once ashamed of his father for looking at such garbage, and curious beyond control. One by one, he took those magazines to his bedroom, where he studied them, night after night, until he had almost memorized each pose and position of each of the women. The ones he liked best, of course, were the short-haired blondes with shaved crotches. And if they wore a little bit of black leather, well that was just icing on the cake.

  Joseph never bought one of those magazines himself, and when he grew up, he never went to any one of several rough-trade bars in San Francisco. It didn’t fit with his self-image, and it didn’t fit in with his career plans. His parents had worked too hard for him to embarrass them, and he had a feeling that if he ran with those dark impulses, he would eventually embarrass himself. Best to nip that temptation—just like all dead end temptations—in the bud.

  But sometimes, when he was lonely and wished he had some company, he didn’t think about finding another mate, another mother for the children he hoped to have. He thought about going to a leather bar and finding a woman with short blonde hair and a black leather g-string.

  But it wasn’t an option. He couldn’t afford to g
et sucked into the undertow of that dark scene, and he knew all too well how vulnerable he was. At times he was lonely, at times he was weak. So lonely. So weak. So needy. But being lonely wasn’t an excuse. Neither was weakness.

  He saw what being weak had done for Anna.

  Poor Anna.

  She crawled into his bed one Christmas Eve, when she was home for the holidays, thick with drugs, and he was still a young fourteen and excited about the coming Christmas morning. He was dreaming that he was waking up into a dream, that a naked girl was walking across his moonlit room, not unlike some of the other “nocturnal emission” dreams he’d had in the past. But this one seemed incredibly real.

  She picked up his comforter and sheet and slid a cool body in next to his bed-warmed one. She pulled up his pajama tops and pressed cold breasts next to his hot skin. His dream goddess was tall and thin and blonde, and she groaned in his ear and pushed his fingers— “I found your magazines,” she whispered into his ear, moving his hot palm down her cool belly. His sleepy hand was mesmerized with the feel of her. “Those white sluts told me what to do, told me what you wanted.” And his penis sprang to life as he became aware that the perfectly formed mound he found molded to his hand was completely hairless. So smooth to his fingertips in one direction, with a slightly rough, stubbled nap in the other direction.

  Awareness came slowly to his lust-drenched mind. He’d jerked his hand away as he realized it was Anna, his sister. He pulled away from her and discovered that her skin was cool because it was still wet. She’d come directly from the shower, where she’d shaved her head, her eyebrows, her crotch. “No, Anna,” he said, but she grabbed his hand and urged it onward where the flesh was hot and moistly slick.

  “White sluts,” she said.

  “Ma!” Joseph screamed, and then pushed Anna out of his bed and onto the floor.

  His parents ran into his room to see what the problem was, and when the light came on, his mother began to cry, while his father covered Anna with Joseph’s comforter and took her back to her room.

  That was the last of the visits. That was the last time he’d ever seen Anna.