Chapter 38
Laine
He’d said to wait for him, but I didn’t know what that meant exactly. I couldn’t wait anymore. I’d waited all day. I had enough money socked away to last a couple months, but eating into my cash reserves gave me palpitations. It was night, and that meant it was time to make money. To get my life back, I had to start from scratch. Though I felt a thread of excitement from the prospect, I felt mostly fear, because I wasn’t going to stake out the right restaurant or personal trainer. I wasn’t after the right celebrity doing the wrong thing. I didn’t know what I was after, but I wasn’t going to find it in the house.
Simple things first. There would be no tips. I was the tip. I was the mark. They were waiting outside my building’s front door and the garage exit. I had to avoid the paparazzi to be one. I laughed at the very thought then got on a pair of sneakers. I would run faster and quieter than ever. If I could get out the door, I could get something. I knew this city like a lover, and she’d whisper her secrets to me.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and climbed the stairs to the top level. A sign warned me that the emergency alarm would go off if I opened the door to the roof. I reached into the front pocket of my bag and removed a little circuit board the size of a stick of gum. I screwed a silver rod into the bottom and reached for the top of the door. I jammed the circuit board between the beige box connected to the top of the door and the one connected to the doorjamb. When I opened the door, the alarm had no idea anything had happened, and it slept like a good child. All I had to do was grab it on the way back.
The cold night air swept through my hair as I traversed the roof in my high tops. I crossed my building and jumped onto the next, avoiding the shafts between the buildings and the little fans and vents that waited to trip me.
Before heading down the fire escape around the corner, I took a moment to stand at the edge and look over the city. Every blinking light over the landscape serviced a person. How many were looking at my pictures? How many wondered about me and what Michael saw in me? How many were outraged on my behalf? How many wrinkled their noses?
I’d never know. Their opinions were relevant as a whole, but as individuals, their importance diminished. So Mrs. June Snowcone in Encino thought I was a whore? What did that matter? She wasn’t even a speck of light in the flat plaid grid of the Valley. I could ignore her. I could stop caring about her by no more than deciding to.
When I was the one with the opinions, they seemed valid and real, but from the outside looking in, or maybe the inside looking out, they didn’t matter. From this view, I had the sense that they didn’t know me. Those people knew nothing of my struggles or what went into my decisions. From this view was peace, because I understood that I wasn’t a two-dimensional black-and-white photo but a woman, in full color, who moved in time and space, who had relationships, a sense of humor, a past and a future.
It didn’t matter.
June Snowcone couldn’t touch me.
Beneath me, four floors below and across the street, I caught a movement as smooth as marbles rolling across a suddenly tilted table. Four, six, nine dark shapes followed a pale suit and blond head. I couldn’t make out what the voices were saying, but I backtracked to my building’s roof to get a closer look.
They followed her as if she was the Pied Piper. When she got to my side of the street, I recognized her.
“Lucy!” I called.
She stopped and looked up.
“Wait for me!” I said.
When I opened the stairway door, the alarm went off, and I didn’t care. I ran down, taking turns at high speed, thankful for my little black court shoes. I skipped steps and bounded down the last two, three, five steps until I got to the lobby.
I slapped open the glass door. “Back off, assholes.”
They barked my name and took pictures. I was no longer their friend. I recognized them by their facial hair and rigs, their outfits, and the way they held their equipment, but I’d become a mark. I didn’t hate them for it, but that didn’t make it less true.
Lucy came in with her head high and her bag at her side.
“Hey,” I said, pulling her out of range of the cameras. “Are you all right?”
“I’m used to them.”
“No, I mean… what are you doing here? You’re not going to give me a hard time about the pictures, are you? I was just a kid. I’m not trying to hurt him.”
“Stop one minute,” she said, sitting on the old leather couch.
The lobby had been done in modernist furniture and poured concrete, with large black-and-white photos of the neighborhood when it was being built. Her eyes flicked over the details then back on me.
“Do you want to come upstairs?” I asked.
“Another time.” She patted the seat next to her as she’d done in the bathroom, and I sat.
“I know why you’re here,” I said.
“Really?”
“I know it’s hurting him.”
“What? Those pictures?” She looked incredulous.
I felt peeled open. She wasn’t Jane Snowcone. She was right in front of me, breathing the same air, and she had nails and teeth that could hurt me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh, please. When I said hurt him, I meant hurt him. I didn’t mean create an inconvenient sideshow.” She put her hand over mine. “I’m not saying what happened is an inconvenience to you. I’m saying, he’s not hurting the way you think. Not if I know him. Not over that.”
“Over what then?” I said suspiciously.
“Don’t you watch the E channel or something?”
“Not today, I don’t.”
“Wise.” She stood, hitching her bag over her shoulder. “We might as well go out the front. Do you mind if we take my car?”
“Where are we going?”
“Gareth Greydon is in the hospital for liver failure. Michael is there, and you should be with him. You’ll never get through without me, so… come on.”
I didn’t think much past that. Fathers were important. I knew that verbally. I could say it to myself with conviction and feeling, but I didn’t know what I was talking about. So I was grateful for Lucy. If I’d heard about Gareth any other way, I might not have known what to do.
As Lucy and I walked through the bank of paps with their crack-exposing flashes and name-calling I was learning to ignore, I steeled myself to walk back into Michael’s world.