Break

by CD Reiss

  “Who called?”

  “My brother. You have to get Warren out.”

  “Out? Not after yesterday.”

  “Now,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Warren spiked the shit he got Jonathan, and if not today, tomorrow he’s going to pay the same way I did.”

  “I’ll have the orderlies watch him.”

  “He’s paying off half the orderlies!” I shouted. “The place is fucked.”

  Elliot breathed deeply and looked into my face, studying it for the truth behind the emotions. “And Jonathan’s drunk?”

  “Three sheets at eleven in the morning.”

  He put up a finger. “Good. Don’t worry. I can get you through today.”

  “How?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I trust you to do what’s right. But it might not be the right thing.”

  “It’s the right thing.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He snapped his keys off the counter. “Abuse my power.”

  39

  FIONA

  I sped north, shutting out everything but the route back to Malibu until my phone rang and my defenses crashed. I pulled off the exit and picked up the phone as I pulled into a gas station parking lot. It was Margie returning my call.

  “Jonathan,” I said. “You have to get Warren out or Jonathan or something.”

  I explained my call with our brother. I could hear her breathing when I was done, but she didn’t speak for too long.

  “What?” I asked. “Just say it.”

  “He’s denying everything,” she said. “He says it was—”

  “Consensual. We knew he’d say that. That’s why we got the rape kit.”

  More silence.

  “What?”

  “I just got out of the hearing. Westonwood fought it. They have a pack of lawyers. They make fifteen hundred an hour, these guys.”

  My heart sank. In the dead center of her silence were my worst fears. “Can we get Daddy’s lawyers back?”

  I heard a sniff from the other side. Jesus Christ, was she crying? Over this?

  “Stop crying, Margie. This isn’t over.”

  “It is. It’s all over. The system is fucked. You can’t win by doing things the right way in this world. No. There is no right and wrong. There’s only what you get away with and what you don’t.”

  “Okay, you know what? Thanks for the little pep talk. I’ll be sure to slit my wrists after supper, but right now, Jonathan Drazen and Warren Chilton are trapped in a small box together, and one’s a predator.”

  Another sniff. I waited. The morning fog blurred the horizon, and I counted cars going up PCH.

  “I’ll figure it out,” she said.

  “I will too. Don’t forget to call.”

  “I love you,” she said. “And I’m sorry.”

  My phone buzzed with another call. I looked at the screen. Elliot.

  “I love you too.”

  I switched calls. “Elliot?”

  “I have Jonathan in disciplinary isolation,” he said softly.

  “Is he safe?”

  “I’m staying around to make sure. Chilton’s in the rec room. Doesn’t seem bothered.”

  “He’s crazy.”

  “We have actual names for what he is. But crazy will do. Your brother can’t get out of here any time soon. So the only way to separate them is to approve Warren’s release next week. Is that what you want?”

  Across from me was a hardware store parking lot with men sitting out front and waiting for a job, a convenience store, a garbage-strewn curb. None of it had anything to do with me. None of it had the answer. What did I want? I wanted to toss Warren to these men and tell them all what he did.

  But I couldn’t do that.

  Warren would get out and go after Karen for fun. Then once Jonathan was released, he’d buddy up to him and make nice until my dumbass brother didn’t know what hit him.

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s what I want.”

  “There’s a chance he’ll be required to stay if the grand jury gets to it in time.”

  “They won’t. Can you keep Jonathan in isolation for a whole week?”

  “No. Forty-eight to seventy-two hours, max.”

  I slid down my seat. Huffed a breath.

  “Where will you be later?” he asked.

  I wanted him. His arms around me, his voice in my ear. With everything going on, his attention would soothe the memory of the police station. He could make it all go away for a few hours.

  Just like a drug.

  “Is it okay if I take some time?” I said. “I need a day to absorb everything. I feel overwhelmed.”

  He didn’t answer right away.

  “Of course it’s fine.”

  We hung up. He’d paused before answering. Not too long, but long enough to make me wonder what it was about. Was he wondering whether or not to trust me? Did he want to mention that he expected me to be faithful, even when he wasn’t around? Or was that just in my head?

  I could obsess all day. Instead, I went home. I had to arrange getting Snowcone back to the stables, sell a car, take care of the practicalities of my life. Elliot could trust me. I just had to prove it.

  40

  FIONA

  I hadn’t unpacked my things in Laurel Canyon in the first place. The biggest problem I had was finding where Deacon had put everything.

  “What are you looking for?” Debbie asked.

  “I don’t know. I feel like I had more than this.” I indicated the two small duffels on the bed.

  “You didn’t.”

  “How can that be?”

  Debbie shrugged. “On Maundy, you wore what you were told, and when you wore something else, you got it from your own house.”

  The place with the walk-in closets so big they needed windows. The one with a room just for shoes. Right.

  “About the other night,” I said, and she stood up straighter. “Thank you. I know what you were trying to do. Give me back the control I gave up a long time ago.”

  She put her hands on my face and her nose to mine. She smelled of tea and citrus, and I had to resist the urge to kiss her.

  “Did it work?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Mostly. Maybe?” I shrugged and dug around for an honest answer. “I can’t tell, actually. One night of topping you was great, but the jury’s still out on life-changing.”

  She kissed me quickly then stepped back. I was grateful. It was hard to think with her standing so close.

  “You were a child too long,” she said.

  “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

  “Just be a grown-up.”

  Yeah. It wasn’t that easy, but why should it be?

  I grabbed one duffel and started for the other, but Debbie took it.

  “You never answered me,” I said. “About the connection between Deacon and me. If you saw it or not.”

  She handed me the bag. “With you and him, I couldn’t figure it out. There’s a linking, but it’s not complete. Not one hundred percent. You’ll always be connected to him. Maybe not in a way either of you likes or understands, but there is a small space you fill for each other.”

  “I feel like you fill a space too.”

  “With you and me, it’s just human. You gave me something I needed. Thank you.”

  I dropped the bags and hugged her. She wrapped her arms around me.

  “Will I see you again?” I asked.

  “Yes. I promise. Yes.”

  I went to the door. I didn’t think I was going to get out clean. Nothing could be easy, especially the hard things.

  Deacon stood by my car, looking as though he was going to get in and drive it away without me. It was perfect for him. Proportioned for a man with broad shoulders and a crooked nose. He opened the trunk.

  “You’re letting me go?” I asked.

  “You’ll be back.”

  I almost said no. Never. Returning to him woul
d be like taking a step backward, but what would be the point of saying that? To hurt him? He looked fine. He looked like nothing touched him, but it was an act. His shell was hard and as strong as stone, but I’d always known the way in.

  I dropped my bags in the trunk and kissed his cheek, letting his smell of earth and leather fill me for the last time. He let me hold him, but he was guarded.

  When I drove through the gate and saw him in the rearview, I knew I hadn’t seen the last of him. Elliot called, but I didn’t pick up. It would have been disrespectful to what had just happened. What I had just done.

  I drove up the 405 to the 101 to the 110 to the 105 back up the 405…the Meditation Loop around Los Angeles.

  I pulled off the freeway and into a spot when my phone rang. It was Elliot.

  “Jonathan was almost out of isolation,” he said.

  “How? What the hell do you have to do in that place to get stuck in isolation?”

  “Attack your therapist.”

  I put my head on the wheel and closed my eyes. “What if I just signed myself in?”

  “I won’t admit you. Not so you can do the job I should be doing.”

  “We don’t have time to wait to see if you can do your job.”

  “I checked his room and Warren’s room for more alcohol, and there isn’t any.”

  “Bullshit. Did you check him for Rohypnol?”

  “We would have found it.”

  I looked out the window but couldn’t see a thing past the glass. It was all colors and edges, movement and stillness. Nothing meant anything.

  “He knows,” I said. “And if you pay too much attention to him, you’re going to expose yourself. You’ll be a disgraced therapist.”

  I used Deacon’s words because they were right. He was going to lose his work and feel more shame than he could bear, both for his affair with me and for manipulating Westonwood’s system. That would be my fault. I’d dragged him into this, and he’d already done too much, told me too much, broken who-even-knew-how-many codes and ethics.

  “Do you like your work?” I asked.

  “Yes, I do. But I like you better.”

  “Do you believe in responsibility? Like, to heaven. Not the law or the rules. But that God or whatever knows what’s your fault and what you should have done to make it right, and if you don’t, you’ve done wrong? Even if something wasn’t directly your fault, but you caused it with some stupid decisions and you let bad shit happen when you could have stopped it? That kind of responsibility.”

  “I think that’s a hamster on a wheel.”

  “I want to start over. I want a clean slate. I can’t bear it. Everything that makes me happy hurts someone.”

  There was a long silence. A truck went by so fast my car lifted a little on its struts and dropped, as if it wanted to get ripped into the draft but was too heavy.

  “It’s not your fault, Fiona.”

  “Not yet it’s not.”

  I heard a beep on his side.

  “I have to go. When am I seeing you tonight?”

  “I’ll call you,” I said.

  41

  FIONA

  Crazy Fiona. I’d always been Crazy Fiona. It was easy. I just did what I wanted when I wanted. I loved my life, even the parts I hated. I saw myself through other people’s eyes and knew only their need to be entertained.

  I’d had a job to do, and I did it.

  I still wanted flake. I still wanted sex. I still wanted to live in a lens.

  But I didn’t want to want to.

  I wanted to feel the all-over everything of a really clean high and the freedom of a new dick, but I had a voice in my head telling me to just go one more day without them. I’d done good work. Don’t throw it all away.

  And the other voice in my head said, “It’s for a good cause. You can do what you want one more time. Just one more time… to save Jonathan.”

  Fucking voice.

  I didn’t know how to walk that razor, and once the flake started flowing, I had no way to keep my balance. It would go however it would go.

  Elliot came to my place after his day at Alondra. I peeled off his clothes, and he watched as I removed mine. Every time we fucked, he got a little bossier, a little more dominating, a little rougher. He’d never be Deacon. But if I wanted Deacon, I’d be with him.

  The sun had set completely when he wrapped himself around me.

  “I need to get back in,” I said. “Before Warren figures out a way to get to Jonathan.”

  “We’re watching him. Don’t you trust me?”

  “I trust you, but I don’t trust the world. Can you take me in? Commit me? Just say the therapy is going bad?”

  “You’d have to be a danger to yourself or others.”

  “Tell them I’m a danger to myself.”

  “But you’re not. You’re a danger to me.”

  I rolled on top of him. “I admire your faith. I admire how you want to do things the right way.”

  “You say it like you can’t do the same.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that I was incapable, only that I was outside those rules. For better or worse, what had bound other people had never bound me.

  “I know you won’t save me from myself,” I said. “If I’m doing something stupid, I have to just do it and face the consequences. But this is different. This is my brother, and you know as well as I do that he’s in no position to deal with this himself. And I’ve got nothing on Warren. No proof he intends to do anything, and what are you going to do with a psycho’s fucking intentions anyway? So we can muck around with the authorities all we want, and what happened to me is going to happen to my brother. I won’t have that on my head. He was brought up the same way I was, and I know what it’s like. He needs time to grow up, and Warren’s going to take it away from him.”

  He kissed me. “I admire your nobility and your loyalty. It’s beautiful. It makes me crazy about you. But it makes me afraid for you too. If you go back in, you’re separated from me. I don’t want that ever again. I want us going forward, not back.”

  I kissed him. He bit my bottom lip, gently keeping me from moving away.

  He was right. My thinking was too literal and limited. Maybe there was another way to do this.

  42

  FIONA

  I’d done the unthinkable. I’d spoken to outsiders about what happened between the privileged. We were the mafia. We were the law. We did not break the silence about what we did to each other.

  “Is Baby here?” I asked Jack.

  His chin was scratched raw under his lip and his hair had a bald patch. He kept playing with the area around it. “I don’t know where she’s at.”

  “What about Karen?”

  “Nah, man.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I slapped his hand away from the bald patch by his ear. A hair was trapped between two fingers.

  “They won’t even talk to you if you find them.”

  We were on a Hollywood rooftop with a pool and pod chairs, twelve stories up. The roof was surrounded by three-foot-high stone walls that made you feel like you were about to fall onto Sunset.

  I wore a bikini like all the other girls. Below us, the lights of a movie premier cast shafts into the sky. The music was low, the paparazzi waited in a pack on the sidewalk, and limos lined up around the block.

  “Jackey!” Baby came between us, putting her arms around Jack. Her pink bag was open like a mouth spitting hundreds. Her chin was striped with pink scratch marks. “Do you have any more tar?”

  “A little.”

  “Hey,” I said, “I was looking for you.”

  She ignored me and whispered in Jack’s ear. He swallowed. She moved her hand between his legs, and his eyes fluttered closed. Derek pulled me to the dance floor before I had to witness whatever it was Baby would have been happy for me to witness.

  I turned. “Don’t leave before I talk to you,” I said to Baby.

  She didn’t even look at me when she held up her middle
finger.

  I called Karen while I gyrated against Derek. No answer.

  Derek pulled up my bikini top while we danced, running his thumbs across my nipples. I pulled it back down. Derek’s hands on me snapped me into a clarity where Elliot saw me with another man. I felt what he would have felt. I thought what he would have thought. The pain was palpable.

  I wasn’t there to hurt Elliot. I was there to talk to Baby. I needed to feel her out, see if she thought Daddy Chilton would cut a deal before his son turned into a PR nightmare.

  “Have you seen Karen?” I asked Derek.

  He put his arms around me and swayed his hips. “Nope.” He untied the back of my bikini top.

  “Jesus.” I pulled away, feeling for the strings. “Quit it.” I tied the top back together.

  “Is this what it is now?” he asked in my ear. “You’re a prude and a rat?”

  Funny how not doing a bunch of drugs or fucking anyone who asked was considered weird. Or how telling the cops you were raped made you an outsider. But who could blame him? We had procedures in our world, and I wasn’t following them.

  “I’m both and more, asshole.” I noticed a little mark on his chin, and I poked it. “What’s this? Is this Jack’s shit?”

  “You should try it. Might make you normal again.”

  I nodded. It was probably fantastic. A high like no other. I turned and faced the pool, dropping my phone onto my little red chamois. Derek grabbed me from behind and I kicked him back. My foot landed near my phone and skidded, knocking it into the pool.

  Crap.

  The phone went vertical and accelerated to the bottom, landing soundlessly. I dove in. The water was bath warm, and the underwater lights made the black, and now useless, device easy to find. I scooped it up and swam for the surface.

  When my head popped up from the surface and I felt the cold air on my face, saw the stars above, heard the sounds of the fans and people downstairs, I felt a gratitude and happiness for my simple existence on the earth. It was like being high, but not like that at all.

  “Did you hear about Karen?” someone said next to me.