And what a grand revenge it would be. What better way to make me sorry, what sweeter way to make me suffer, than to make me famous?
________________
On my way out of Ralph’s, I bought a box of flu capsules, some vitamin C, and several cans of gourmet chicken soup. My idiotic stint in the ocean was pulling me under the weather. Hopefully, with a little rest and a lot of self-maintenance, I could nip the illness in the bud.
Still, I didn’t feel like going home just yet. I knew Madison was still there, and I couldn’t stand her seeing me all cracked and vulnerable like this. Might as well do the cheap thing and wait her out. And since I was already here in Marina del Rey, I knew just the right person to help me kill the time.
Despite the traffic, it took me only ten minutes to get to the marina. Once again it was the magic hour. Twilight painted the sky in vibrant pink hues. Passing cars turned their headlights on. The lampposts buzzed to life.
It was a beautiful sight, to be sure, but as I walked the docks, I kept my hands in my pockets and my eyes on the wooden boards beneath me. So much for my lifelong resolve to never see the Pacific again. I was back already. Worse, the sound of sea waves slapping against pillars was enough to slap me back into very recent history. The awful things I’d said to Harmony. The bile from my mouth that stained what used to be a sterling silver tongue.
On the plus side, I now had more in common with Ira. The man was a verbal lumberjack whose nasty wit could fell the sturdiest of souls. Next to him, I was about as caustic as skim milk. In fact, if I told him I had called a woman a bitch today, he’d probably only chastise me for being uncreative. Now there was a perspective I could deal with.
I was so busy aiming my gaze at the pier that it wasn’t until I reached the edge that I caught the change in scenery. Had I been even less attentive, I might have boarded the sleek new yacht that bobbed in the Ishtar’s place.
This was a stranger’s ship. Ira didn’t have the capital to upgrade his vessel. And if he had merely taken his old boat out for a jaunt, then he wouldn’t have relinquished his permanent parking spot. I scanned the other yachts within eyeshot, on the off chance that Ira had traded moors with a fellow seaman. There was no Ishtar in sight.
Wearily, I weighed the options. Maybe he moved to a cheaper dock to help support his online role-playing habit. Maybe he sold the boat entirely. Or maybe he found a way to disappear into his digital paradise, never to return.
Whatever it was that triggered the sudden change of address, Ira never saw fit to tell me. I guess we were never really the best of friends. I was never the best of friends.
Whether we reconnected or not, I wished him well in his new life and his new skin. Same went for Miranda. On a better day, in a stronger state, I’d only shake my head at their mad tandem dash to reinvent themselves. But as my body, my soul, and my best-laid plans continued to crumble, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps they were onto something.
________________
My efforts to wait out Madison were thwarted by her mother’s slight tardiness. I approached my apartment building at a quarter after six, only to find Jean’s car pulling into its usual spot by the hydrant. Instead of ducking into my garage, I parked along the curb, four cars behind her. I turned off the ignition and the lights.
Within moments Madison popped out of the building and sauntered down my front steps. From a distance, she seemed okay, even though I’d all but abandoned her today. I wasn’t so egocentric to think that her sun rose and set on my actions, but the more I thought about Jean’s sticky note, the stranger Madison’s stability seemed. They had just moved out on Neil. That was a huge thing for an eighth-grader to deal with, but you’d never tell from Madison’s calm young face that she was dealing with it at all.
Damn. Maybe she was a clone of Gracie. I didn’t see the physical resemblance as much as Miranda did, but they were definitely built from the same emotional template. My ex-lover was a brilliant, quirky, and benevolent woman. Sadly, she was also closed to the point of being airtight. At some point she began to suffocate inside herself. Fortunately, she found a man with the right tools to extricate her. Somehow, God knows how, he helped her free.
But what if Madison isn’t so lucky? What if she becomes another Gracie and then doesn’t get rescued? What would that make her, besides a clone of me?
Madison got in the SUV, and Jean drove them away. Finally, I breathed again. I just needed soup. I just needed a little soup and a lot of sleep, and then I’d be myself again, or at least a reasonable facsimile.
________________
In my dream, I flew east, into the sunrise. It welcomed me.
________________
I sat up on the couch. The living room was pitch black. Everything was off, and yet something had beeped me back into the waking world. I turned on the lamp, but nothing happened. If I was indeed awake, I was in the midst of another rolling blackout. I opened up the laptop and made my way in the light of the start-up screen. My gray cell phone vibrated on the kitchen counter. I had a new text message.
We need to talk ASAP. Will you meet me at Club Silence? It’s very important.
It was ten-thirty at night, my head was aching worse than ever, and I’d well exceeded my recommended daily allowance for drama. I was in no shape to take on the indomitable Jean Spelling. Still—
Okay.
—it was better than sitting here in the dark, thinking about my nascent cold and my bleak future. If anyone could get me out of the shadow of Harmony Prince, even briefly, it was Jean.
I gathered myself. After retrieving my flashlight from the junk drawer, I went upstairs to my bedroom, changed into clean clothes, and dug out my old eyeglasses. Technically, I was supposed to wear them whenever I drove at night, but they never seemed to make it into my A-squad of accessories. Tonight I definitely needed them. My naked eyes wouldn’t get me to Santa Monica alive.
The Third Street Promenade was dim and virtually deserted. All the stores were closed. Only a handful of souls wandered in and out of the restaurant/bars. At first I went down the wrong alley and up the wrong stairwell, but eventually I traced my way back to Club Silence.
On a late Tuesday night, the lack of noise was downright eerie. There were only six other people scattered throughout the establishment: an elderly couple by the boom box (gesturing), a young couple at the bar (kissing), a middle-aged bartender (signing something incomprehensible to me), and Jean.
She watched me from the far end of a laptop table. She wore a long black T-shirt over jeans. Silver hairband. No makeup or jewelry. The most striking difference, one that almost kept me from recognizing her, was her cat’s-eye glasses. They redefined her entire face. She could have passed for a college student, a wry and eclectic theater major who was into Brecht, Björk, herbal ecstasy, and Vertigo comics. I never wanted to get under her shirt more.
She tossed me a curt nod. <Thanks for coming.>
<What? Why are you mad at me? What did I do?>
She winced at herself. <I must look pretty grim, don’t I?>
<Maybe. I don’t know. I’m very off tonight.>
<So am I. I was already in bed when I decided to call you. The lights were out. My contacts were out. I was trying to sleep. But then I realized that if I didn’t talk to you now, I wouldn’t sleep at all.>
<I didn’t know you wore contacts,> I wrote.
<Yeah. The perils of computer work. What’s your excuse?>
I tapped my glasses. <I don’t wear contacts. I barely even use these things.>
<Take them off.>
With an “as you please” shrug, I took them off, folded them, and dropped them in my shirt pocket.
She tilted her head, studying me. <You lo
ok better without them.>
<You look incredible with yours.>
Expressionless, she retrieved a money order from her purse and slid it across the table. It was $975.50, exactly a hundred dollars more than I’d paid for the Saturn repairs. I’d e-mailed her the final cost this afternoon, shortly before leaving for Ralph’s.
<Why the extra hundred?>
<For the inconvenience.>
Miranda would have laughed her ass off. <Why a money order?>
<Because if I gave you a check, you might be tempted to rip it up into pieces.>
That was mildly encouraging. In her mind, I was still the kind of man who was susceptible to random acts of charity. I was about to respond, but then she pulled an item from the floor: a fat stack of papers. I recognized it immediately as Alonso’s novel.
<Jesus. Don’t tell me you finished that thing already.>
She plunked it down on the table, between our laptops. On the top page, covering the book’s dedication, was a single yellow sticky note, filled with Jean’s curvy handwriting.
GODSEND
a novel
by Harmony Prince’s lawyer
With a droll stare, she raised her eyebrows at me. See the problem now? Of course. Of course it had to do with Harmony. Everything in the world, every problem in my life, came back to Harmony.
<You were smart to get rid of the title page,> Jean wrote, without taking her gaze off me. <But if you had actually read the book, like I did, you would have discovered the ten-page afterword at the end. He refers to his novel by name. He also signs it.>
Of course Alonso would be self-indulgent enough to finish his work with a lengthy explanation of what it meant to him. Loquacious prick.
<He’s very talented,> she added. <Very strange. Very kinky. But very talented.>
By sheer reflex, my addled mind processed a weak dodge: I was simply studying the enemy. That’s the only reason I had the book. I was studying the mind of the enemy.
Shit. I was too sick to lie.
<How did you find out he was Harmony’s lawyer?>
<I saw his name on-screen last night. On that CNN show. I remembered it because it looked nice. The letters in “Alonso” kind of look like a little truck, with the O’s as wheels.>
Damn it, Jean. Don’t do this to me. Don’t be all smart and sexy and weird tonight. I’m not strong enough to handle you.
She read my discomfort, then vented herself through a long, pensive breath. <Honestly, you gave yourself away.>
<I know.>
<Last night. The way you looked at Harmony when she cried.>
<I know.>
<It made me nervous. I know it’s not my business, but you’re obviously involved in something murky here.>
“Jean...”
<And I wouldn’t care about that, except you’ve got my DAUGHTER involved.>
“Hold it!”
The remaining patrons watched me as I stood up and dragged my wooden chair around the table. I sat so close to Jean, my knees touched her thigh.
“I’m sorry,” I said with slow articulation. “I can’t type and look at you at the same time, and I need you to see me for this. I’m going to tell you two things that are absolutely, one hundred percent true. I want you to read me very carefully as I say them, all right? Read my lips. Read my face.”
Thrown by my intensity, Jean nodded. I took in a deep swath of air, then held up a finger.
“One: yes. You’re right. There’s more to this job than meets the eye. I’d explain the whole thing to you right now, but it would take an hour, and honestly, the details don’t matter. All you need to know...”
For a brief and disturbing moment, my inner teleprompter went dark. My words, my thoughts, became scrambled beyond recognition. I suddenly wished I was fluent in Sign, so I could chop through this goddamn jungle of rhetoric and cut right to the heart of the matter.
“I had a plan, Jean. I had a plan that would have channeled a nation’s idle rage off a man who didn’t deserve it and onto a bunch of people who didn’t exist. It was a crazy and ambitious plan, but it wasn’t a cruel one. I truly and honestly believed that this would benefit everybody. It just...Things took a bad turn. I know that’s small comfort to the people involved, but since you’re not involved, all you need to know is that I meant well. I screwed up, but I meant well. Did you get that?”
With wide and alert eyes, she nodded. Somewhere on the outskirts of my consciousness was the impulse to run my hands up her arms, up her sleeves, all the way to the peaks of her shoulders, which I’d madly caress with my thumbs for as long as she’d let me. Instead, I merely raised a second finger.
“Two: I have bent over backwards to protect Madison from the more complex aspects of this operation. That is the one thing I’ve done right. Your daughter is such a marvel to me. All I want to be is a positive force in her life. I want to help her process all the deceptive crap that’s floating around out there, but in a way that doesn’t make her more cynical. There are media literacy books that can help me. Websites. I’ll do whatever it takes. I just...”
I turned my head away. “Shit...”
Jean put her hand on my cheek, trying to turn it back, but I resisted her. This wasn’t what it looked like. I wasn’t about to cry. I was about to sneeze.
Finally, it came out. It was one of those full-body sneezes that shorts out the mind, forcing you to reboot. By the time I looked back at Jean, I was covering my lower face with both hands. She had a tissue waiting for me.
“Thank you.”
It was just as well that I sneezed. I was getting a little too maudlin for my own comfort. I took her tissue and whatever dignity I had left and wandered off to the men’s room to clean myself up. I made the mistake of looking at myself in the mirror. I was a mess. The strain on my face was visible for everyone to see. The illusion of me was a mere flicker.
As I returned to the table, I dragged the chair back to its original spot, then sat down. Jean continued to watch me, expressionless.
<You okay?>
<I’ll live,> I typed, while trying to keep eye contact.
<Scott Singer, you are an absolute mystery to me.>
<You’re not exactly an open book yourself.>
<Tell me what you’re thinking right now.>
<I’m thinking how awful I look,> I replied with a sniff. <I’m thinking how good you look. And I’m trying to come up with some clever excuse to work my way back to your side of the table.>
On reading my words, Jean closed her eyes and let out a surrendering moan. She rose to her feet and made her way to me. I was about to stand up, but she pressed my shoulders down and slipped past me. From behind, she embraced me, wrapping herself around my neck like a mink stole.
I closed my eyes and rolled my head back, holding her forearm with both hands. I could feel her breath against my skin. She planted a quick, innocent kiss on my jaw, then rested her lips on my cheek. She kissed the same spot several times, rapidly, as if she were drilling her way into me. It was sweet and strange and almost painful in its potency. Wincing, I squeezed her wrists.
“God, I need this...”
Abruptly, the drilling kisses stopped. She pulled her right arm free of my grip. I could hear the sound of slow keystrokes.
Finally, I opened my eyes and looked at the screen.
<i get scared.>
I pecked the keys with my right index finger. <so do i.>
<i’m a coward. i’m a cynic. and i’m a complete wreck right now.>
<so am i.>
She held me tighter, kissing the side of my face. She smelled like lime. She must have worn a facial cream to bed and then washed it off. It smelled wonderful.
Jean signed her affections with a quick kiss and then pulled away from me. She straightened herself out and returned to her seat.
<Sorry,> she wrote. <I would have loved to stay where I was but this place closes in fifteen minutes and I have a lot of my own explaining to do.>
<You moved out.>
She sighed. <We moved out.>
<Just tell me I wasn’t a factor in that decision.>
<You weren’t. You couldn’t have been.>
<Why not?>
She grimaced sheepishly. <Because we moved out three months ago.>
All I could do was blink at her as I put the pieces together.
She shrugged. <I told you you weren’t a marital issue.>
<You wanted me to believe you were still married.>
<I AM still married. But it’s over. I want out and so does Neil, but the legal process has been a living hell. We meet at least three times a week in a vain attempt to separate his debts from mine. We always end up crying, cursing, and saying horrible things to each other. Well, mostly I say the horrible things. I know just how to cut him down into little cubes. I’m not proud of it.>
God. With that razor-sharp mind of hers, she could shred a man to pieces. And at the rate we were going, it would only be a matter of months, weeks, days, before she’d crack the flaws in my defenses. Soon enough, she’d have the power to break me with just one tap of the chisel.
<But then he knows my weakness,> she continued. <He takes her out every Saturday night and there’s not a damn thing I can do to stop it. He poisons Madison against me. Even her father wasn’t low enough to do that.>
The rage on her face made her an entirely different woman to me. Selfishly, I was relieved to be an innocent bystander, but the dark voice inside wondered how long it would take for me to earn my own share. Nine days was all it took to bring the hatred out of Harmony, and she wasn’t one who hated easily.
On reading my expression, Jean breathed out a quiet groan. <This is why I didn’t tell you. It’s an ugly part of my life. I didn’t need someone new to complain to. I needed someone to distract me. Someone to laugh with, joke with, flirt with. And on that front, my dear, you have been a godsend to me.>
She briefly held up her left hand, flashing me her white-gold wedding band.