Break

by CD Reiss

  I snapped out of my reverie. It was Arrow.

  “Hear what?” I asked, flipping my phone open. Yeah. Useless.

  “Her parents found coke in her sheets and committed her.”

  “She’s in Westonwood?” I waded to the edge and tossed my phone onto the tiles.

  “Guess so.”

  “Huh.” I lifted myself out of the water and pivoted until I was sitting on the edge. Karen was inside. She needed it, and I was glad she was getting help, but I wished it was anywhere but Westonwood.

  “Hey, Fee,” Arrow said from the pool. “You look good.”

  “Really?”

  He’d taken me by surprise, sincerity all over his face.

  “Yeah. Kind of, you know. Together.” He nodded, eyes narrowed as if seeing something for the first time. “Kinda cool.”

  “Thanks, Arrow. You’re all right.”

  He winked at me and leaned back into the water, swimming away from my all-rightness.

  I got out of the pool and snapped up my chamois, leaving a path of water drops and wet footprints through the bar.

  The locker rooms were paneled in dark teak and floored in warm matte marble. Orchids marked the empty spaces between the sinks, and the lockers weren’t even locked for the private party. I flipped mine open.

  I had to tell Elliot that Warren was after Karen, but my phone was useless. I tapped the back, pushed the green button, shook it for whatever that was worth. The black screen just mocked me.

  I heard a laugh I recognized from one of the shower stalls. Outside it, on the floor, sat a pink Prada bag.

  “Baby!” I said. “Can I use your phone?”

  I need to tell my therapist your brother is going to rape Karen as payment for amphetamines.

  The shower door popped open. Baby was naked, back to the wall, finger between her legs. Her other hand scratched her lower lip. Jack stood against the opposite wall, watching her.

  “If you can find it in my bag,” she said, and under her breath, she added, “bitch.”

  Jack snapped the bag away and held it out of my reach.

  “Jack,” I said, holding out my hand, “a minute. It won’t take a minute.”

  “You called me a nerd when we were in the nuthouse. Who’s the nerd now?”

  “You’re still a nerd, Jack. Own it. Now give me the bag.”

  “If I’m a nerd, what are you?”

  “I’m a prude and a rat.” I reached for the bag, but he snapped it away. Baby still danced in a shower stall with her fingers between her legs.

  “Kiss Baby, and I’ll give you the phone.”

  “No.”

  “No?” Baby asked. She acted as if I’d just stuffed Santa back up the chimney.

  “I’m just not in the mood.”

  I could have explained there was someone in my life I didn’t want to hurt. That kissing another human being would jeopardize a relationship that already wasn’t supposed to exist. But I didn’t have the energy, and I wanted the phone.

  “Never mind,” I said. There were a hundred phones on the other side of the door. “Baby, when you’re done here, I just want to talk.”

  “About?”

  “Your brother.”

  She shot out a little laugh through the thick soup of her high. “You talked enough.”

  I shot a look at Jack, who had put the bag down and was rubbing black stringy tar out of a little glass jar.

  “He’s going to be embarrassing. I can take it all back. Say I lied. But I need a meeting with your dad.”

  She smiled. “You Drazens all have daddy issues.”

  “Open,” Jack said. She opened her mouth, and he tucked a bit of tar between her gum and lower lip.

  Baby continued, “Every time Warren fucks someone else, it’s one less time he fucks me.”

  I absorbed what she said but didn’t have time to react before I was fed the image of Jack putting his tar-coated finger between her legs. She gasped. Groaned. Her eyes went wide, and she cried out then came with a shriek.

  “Holy shit!” she said then thrust her hips forward and came again.

  “I tell you what,” Jack said to me. “For the purpose of scientific inquiry, I didn’t see you take a drink yet. I want to see how this stuff works on clean blood.” He scraped the jar of the last of it. “You give this a shot, and I’ll make sure my uncle gets you a meeting with Daddy Chilton. He’s in town until Tuesday morning, I think. Then he’s filming in like Zululand or something.”

  Baby was still in the throes of ecstasy.

  “Was that safe? To put it on her clit like that?”

  “No clue. It works on membranes. I’m experimenting with adding a little K before I go wide. Come on.”

  Jack actually could get the meeting through his uncle, who was a studio head and a big player in the Hollywood old boys’ network. And he could get it soon.

  “You better come through, or you’re going to be the sorriest nerd in California,” I said.

  Baby groaned and slid down the wall.

  “Open up.”

  “You’re putting it where everyone else does,” I said. “Lip only.”

  I opened my mouth. He wedged his finger in the front and slid it across.

  “I always liked you, Fiona.” He took his finger out.

  “I never disliked you, Jack. But I’m starting to.”

  I had more to say, but my thoughts were drowned out by two things: Baby screaming “Make it stop, make it stop,” then clenching, thrusting, pushing against the wall, and my brain flooding with an explosion of endorphins. I had the most unmotivated sense of well-being and bliss I’d ever experienced. This was more than an orgasm. More than emotional happiness. More than a feeling of safety and joy. It wasn’t like coke, where I felt like God, or LSD, where I thought I saw God.

  I became one with God in a blinding eruption of love.

  I couldn’t even feel my body.

  I was trying too hard to get out of my skin to engage a sound or feeling. It was like blacking out without the blackness. Losing consciousness without sleeping. Being engulfed in a light so bright it wasn’t visible.

  This drug was blunt force trauma to the soul.

  A quiet voice in the light said, “Never, ever do this again.”

  At the end of that thought, I became aware of my face at the top of my chin, where the gum curved into lip. It itched a little, then like mad, growing into a fury of tingling deep inside the muscle.

  When I scratched it, I tipped, and something in me said I shouldn’t fall over, whatever I did. I became aware of weight on one elbow, and realized I was on my hands and knees. Lifting a hand to scratch had thrown off my balance.

  I got up on my knees and clawed my chin.

  “Fiona! Get down!”

  The voice sounded like a stereo turned down then up then down really fast.

  A blue light cut through the black light.

  Then a red light.

  And a blue light.

  And the sound of a whop whop whopping helicopter.

  Deacon, who shouldn’t have been anywhere near that rooftop, had a voice that reminded me of feeling safe and right when I felt most vulnerable. I opened my eyes. Or maybe they were already open and I decided to use them to see.

  On my right, just below me, Deacon raised his arms. “Get down. Just get down.”

  On my left, a twelve-story drop onto Sunset Boulevard.

  “Baby,” I said. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine.”

  The music had stopped. An ambulance was parked outside, flashing its lights, and the paparazzi were huddled across the street with their black Cyclops eyes looking at me.

  “You’re lying,” I said. The itch in my chin was furious.

  “Come down, and we can talk about it.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “You don’t have to be,” he said.

  “I can’t stand up.”

  “Fall. I’ll catch you.”

  I tipped a little to the right, t
hen more, and fell into white sheets on a thin mattress with a white light humming over me.

  43

  FIONA

  My gums felt as if they were on fire, and my spine hurt between my shoulder blades, all the way up to my neck. I felt as though someone was pinching the top of my hand, but when I opened my eyes, I saw the IV bag hanging over me, and I knew where I was.

  I took a deep breath.

  Something rustled. To the right and at the foot of the bed. My senses were back, and I smelled him there. I hadn’t placed his scent before.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you smell like the air before it rains?” I said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “I’m sorry,” I continued.

  “Me too.”

  “I can explain.”

  I moved my hand. It wasn’t tied down. I touched my chin and pressed at the cleft where it met my lower lip, relieving the itch in my gums.

  “I’m sure you can.”

  I hitched myself up on my elbows. I was in Westonwood blues. He was in a tan suit and blue tie, his elbows on his knees and his arms draped between them as if fully engaged in something he didn’t understand. Loving me.

  I felt like a clown.

  “What were you thinking?” Elliot asked.

  “That I was taking a cab home.”

  He smiled and looked at the floor.

  “I didn’t go with Deacon,” I said. “He showed up there.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me he didn’t bring you, and he’s a lot of things, but he’s not a liar. And also, I followed you.”

  “Elliot!”

  He put his finger to his lips to remind me that no one should hear. “That makes me an asshole. Fine. But I thought you might pull a stunt to get back in here. And here you are. Well done.”

  I flopped back down. “I had a completely different stunt planned.”

  I put my forearm over my eyes to cut the light. I saw the night in a flash. The pool. The roof. The locker room.

  “Baby,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “No.” I moved my arm away and stared into the light. “Baby Chilton. Is she all right?”

  “I guess. You were the only casualty. You’re all over the news.”

  “I don’t give a shit about that.”

  I didn’t. Baby was all right, at least physically. That mattered to me. I’d had nothing to do with her episode in the shower, but I felt responsible somehow. I was sure Jack had put the tar on her pussy to show off to me what it could do.

  Elliot stood over me, blocking the light. I wished he’d put his hands on me, but he had a sort of detachment about him, and I felt ashamed of what I’d done. Again.

  “So what’s the deal? Am I fifty-one-fiftied again?”

  “You checked yourself in.”

  “I did?”

  “The paramedics gave you a choice: the ER or a mental facility. And here you are. Outpatient probation broken.” He put his hands on either side of me and leaned in, blocking out the light, the room, everything. “Now, how am I going to keep you away from Warren Chilton?”

  “You’re not.”

  “I’m passing you to another therapist.”

  “Obviously. Since you’re fucking me.”

  “I want you to leave Warren alone. Give him enough rope to hang himself.”

  “Am I a disappointment?” I asked.

  “I knew what I was getting into with you.”

  I put my palm on his cheek. He hadn’t shaved, and the roughness under my hand was pleasantly tactile. “I asked if you were disappointed.”

  “I’m not going to lie. I should say ‘thank you’ and walk away right now. I’m surprised at myself. I’m a sensible guy. I think things through, and anything that’s too risky—I don’t do. But you woke something up in me. I was dead. My life was dead. Then you came, and I feel God in you. I hear him in your voice. The crazy shit you do… he speaks to me. I don’t know how long I’ll last on a roller coaster. But all I want right now is for you to get out of here so I can experiment with your body.”

  “Will God keep talking to you if I stop doing crazy shit?”

  “I hope I find out soon.”

  I didn’t want to promise him anything. Promises were for children and people who weren’t worthy of trust. So I didn’t say a word to him, but I spoke to myself.

  I promised myself he’d find out what it was like to be with sane Fiona. Not normal Fiona. Not staid, conservative Fiona. Not a Fiona who made all the least risky choices and didn’t break any rules. That Fiona didn’t exist, and trying to create her wouldn’t do shit but make me miserable.

  But he could get to know sober Fiona. Straight Fiona. Faithful Fiona. I could work hard, stay monogamous, and still be the force of nature he saw God in.

  In his ocean-colored eyes, I saw my own potential. With a little work, I could become those things for him and, more importantly, for myself.

  44

  ELLIOT

  Obviously, I had no interest in emotional self-preservation. I couldn’t even bring myself to consider leaving her.

  I was crazier than she was.

  I’d seen this type of thing go bad, read the case studies, talked a few dozen couples through nightmares of drugs, alcohol, and unpredictable behavior. I didn’t understand why anyone would put themselves through what those people put themselves through, but I counseled them anyway. I’d been the perfect example of ignorance. I didn’t know what made them love each other because I didn’t understand love.

  And that was why I didn’t feel threatened by the fact that Deacon Bruce was in my Westonwood office. He loved her. I got it. I had as much compassion for him as I had for myself.

  “Mister Bruce,” I said, closing the door behind me.

  He was sitting in the leather chair by the window as if it was his office, not mine. He wore a dark suit and white shirt open two buttons, revealing a leather string tied around his neck. A bone-colored pendant in the shape of a cornucopia dangled from it. “You need to let her go.”

  “I can’t.” I started for my desk but stopped. I didn’t want to sit behind a barrier. I put my files down and sat across from him. The light from the window behind him kept his face in darkness and must have exposed my every expression.

  “You’re the one managing her probation.”

  “Not anymore.”

  He didn’t make a move. He was pure control, and I wondered for the first time why he needed to regulate Fiona. I saw his cracks and knew his secrets in that moment. His life was out of control, and without her, it spun away.

  “You found her in a weakened state, and you took advantage of your position.” He spoke as if broadcasting the news. All facts. “She came here, confused and willing to hear whatever anyone said. She idealized you, then you found a way in. You used tricks like hypnosis. You manipulated her vulnerability. For what? What’s your game? Are you her therapist or her lover? Because you know as well as I do that you can’t be both.”

  And in those few words, I was on the defensive.

  “You need to let her go,” I said, turning the subject away from the lines I’d crossed.

  “You don’t have the tools to give her what she needs. You’re weak. If you loved her, you’d take care of her. You’d do what she needed you to do.” His voice was absent jealousy or venom. He spoke as if we were two men with a common interest, and his was superior.

  “It doesn’t work like that. She needs to make her own life.”

  “You’re going to let Warren Chilton rape her again?”

  The “again” was loaded. It implied I’d let it happen the first time. I tamped down my desire to defend myself. I didn’t have to. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I hadn’t failed, even if I felt as though I had.

  “You thought I didn’t know who did it or where it happened,” he said. “She told me last night, before the ambulance came for her. She was raped under your care, and now I’m supposed t
o roll over and let you have her? You underestimate me.”

  “What do you think I should do? Arrange her release? What caseworker in their right mind would put her back in a police cruiser to go home after she was found on a twelve-story ledge, fucked up on a designer drug? Or I should find a way to get Chilton out so he can continue his psychotic spree in society?”

  “She is your priority. Not society.”

  “It’s all my responsibility. All of it. I don’t get to pick and choose.”

  He sprang up and stood over me. “That’s the problem.”

  I wouldn’t be cowed. I wouldn’t be intimidated. Not every decision I’d made had been perfect, but I’d be damned if I would be told I didn’t love her the right way.

  I stood. He was two inches taller, and I was over six feet.

  “The problem, Mister Bruce, is that you’ve done nothing but baby her. You’ve continued the damage her parents did. Your boundaries are constructs. They don’t give her the power to make the right decision. You don’t let her fail because you design failures that are irrelevant and you train her behavior to mold into your world, not the real world. You fucked this up. You fucked it all up. You took a woman who could have figured her life out, and you turned her into a pet who couldn’t wait to run away as soon as you left the gate open.”

  I thought he recognized the truth in what I was saying. Or maybe I needed to believe that. But he seemed to soften just a little, enough for me to continue.

  “You need to let her be,” I said.

  “So you can take her?”

  And there, in its full and splendid glory, was the reason therapists shouldn’t fall in love with their patients. It muddied the waters to thick paste. I lost my ability to advise both Fiona and her enabler. Neither could trust me.

  “You know what’s right. Just do it.” I opened the door. “Let me figure out what to do with Warren.”

  He stepped toward the doorway but stopped long enough to say, “I’ll figure out what to do with him. Here’s what you do. You understand that she’s mine. You understand that what you did was wrong, and you go back to your God and ask for forgiveness. You do not stand in the way of what she needs, now or ever, because I will expose you. I won’t have to lay a finger on you to destroy you.”